


You Might Need Me

by fuckener



Category: Glee
Genre: Canon Rewrite, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-01-24
Updated: 2013-01-24
Packaged: 2017-11-26 19:09:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/653483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fuckener/pseuds/fuckener
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Junior year doesn't go the way Kurt expects. S2 rewrite.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Might Need Me

Junior year is a clean slate for Kurt.

“What, _just_ for you?” Mercedes asks, looking down at him from his bed while he sits on the floor, surrounded by every pair of pants he owns - including purple tartan skinny jeans he holds up hopefully for her inspection that she makes a face at, saying, “Definitely the ‘no’ pile, since the ‘burn’ pile doesn’t exist.” 

He hits her with the leg of them before sighing and concedingly setting them away, because they have been known to cause controversy. “Out of the two of us, I think the one who made it obvious they would bear the social stigma of _incest_ for Finn Hudson needs a clean slate the most,” he mumbles distractedly. 

They’ve gone through most of his clothes, which is a feat, but still nothing. Nothing that clearly states, ‘This year is going to be different,’ or even just, ‘I lost ten pounds and another gained three inches.’ It’s the night before school and Kurt has _nothing_.

“It wasn’t full incest,” Mercedes offers. She pats his shoulder, consolingly, then shrugs. “We didn’t think it was so weird in _Clueless_.”

Kurt sighs again, finally standing up from his clothes-carpeted floor and stretching. “I just want it to be different. The very opposite, actually.” Mercedes nods, looking down consideringly at another shirt that he tugs out of her hands then makes a face at. “We aren’t getting anywhere with this. It’s fine, I’ll figure something out. You should go home and worry about your own outfit for tomorrow.”

She rolls her eyes. “ _Please_. Like I have to.” Sidestepping the mess of skinny jeans, she stands in front of him with her hard, everything-will-be-okay smile and then hugs him tightly, saying, "Night, babe,” before she leaves. 

He sighs and starts all over again.

-

In the end, it doesn’t actually matter what he wears his first day back, because nothing has actually changed and it all gets stained with grape slushie when Azimio passes him yelling at Jacob Ben Israel outside the bathrooms with a one in hand.

And even if he hoped this year would be easier for him from start to finish, he still put an extra set of clothes in his locker just in case, because he knew better. He dresses quickly and heads to history, almost late, quickly taking the last empty seat at the back and hoping the teacher doesn’t notice him slipping in.

He touches his hair, making sure it’s still immaculate before turning to the person beside him to ask if he’s missed anything important.

It’s a boy he’s never seen before in a letterman that isn’t for Mckinley, with a face that _really_ looks out of place in Lima and makes any words in Kurt’s throat die away. His bleached-yellow hair makes Kurt blink, and the boy blinks back, and then Mrs Hagberg is hollering out his name for attendance and Kurt jerks, head sharply turning to face the front, feeling like he’s been caught doing something inexcusable.

“Present,” he answers, and then he says nothing for the rest of the class and makes sure not to turn around again. 

He just kind of glances periodically. Just a little bit.

It’s a dangerous thing - he looks like a regular jock, and his T-shirt tellingly stretches out across his chest and arms, and he’d probably try to beat the shit out of Kurt if he knew why he was looking at him at all. But he also has a hair colour that hasn’t been used by straight guys since ‘N Sync broke up that gives Kurt’s brain a flurry of stupid, wishful ideas.

When he catches Kurt in the act, he just blinks again, curiously, and then smiles at him.

-

Everyone seems to think the first few weeks are uneventful by New Directions standards. The bullying is worse this year, and Kurt has new bruises to prove it, but nobody mentions that.

He doesn’t tell his dad - he closes up again again instead, and Finn tells him over and over, “Your dad’s gonna hulk out at you soon, Kurt, you’re freaking him out,” and he knows it’s true but he can’t stop it. He hates his dad worrying, but more than that he hates that he has to worry constantly no matter where Kurt is or who he’s with just because of who he _is_.

All his frustration from being pushed around goes into the one part of his life that’s going well, and when his dad blows up at him in the garage for it he acts pissed and storms out and tells Mercedes he doesn’t get the big _deal_ with family dinner even though he feels guilty all day for everything he said, because he and his dad are still fragile, and sometimes it still feels like he’s all Kurt has.

In third period Mr Schuester pulls him out of class and drives him to the hospital.

-

Now everyone starts making a fuss.

Kurt gets meatloafs from neighbours he’s never spoke to. Relatives call that he’s never met. Carole works, but Finn sleeps with him in the living room every night and cries with him when he needs it. 

It feels like it drags on forever, going back and forth from school, the house, the hospital. As always his friends get over-involved, and it makes it more miserable that while everyone’s making grand declarations about how much they care, nobody will listen to him at all. 

He sits in class and stares down at the green lines of his blank page for another minute longer and pictures one across a heart-monitor without being able to stop himself. Rubbing his eyes, he forces himself to stay calm, not to burst into tears in class. But he can’t do work, even if Mrs Hagberg’s class only consists silent reading. He can’t even pretend.

He stares at the clock on the wall and it drags and _drags_ on - and then a sheet of paper slides in front of him with nothing on it but a big, pencil-drawn smiley face that takes up the whole page.

When he turns to his side, the blond boy next to him is giving him a small smile. Kurt stopped looking at him at all after he came to class in the Mckinley letterman - which Kurt’s been taught to never be too friendly with - but he never stopped smiling at Kurt every day. 

He mouths, “ _Are you okay?_ ”

Kurt does his best to smile back and shakes his head, then he tries not to look at him for the rest of class because it makes him feel worse.

-

Even when his dad gets better, people keep treating him more differently. Puck is the biggest shock; he sits next to Kurt in glee and in their few classes together and gives anyone in a letterman dirty, warning looks.

That is, until he gets sent to juvie and the boy who sits with him in history finally gets a name at glee practice this week when he comes in with Finn’s arm thrown around him, looking just as nineties-boyband-chic as ever. Him joining glee club is the last hint Kurt needs.

Sam is totally gay. 

Or at least that’s what Kurt’s 98% sure on, until Finn gives him the ‘your gay scares people’ talk, and he does away with it and lets Sam sing with Quinn, like he wants. It’s what everybody wants for him, and out of all of them, Sam was the least concerned by Kurt being the alternative, because he’s a nice guy, and he keeps Kurt a seat in history class so he never needs to move further back and he doesn’t care that much when Kurt gives him an apologetic talk during his very naked shower.

Kurt gets to sing with Rachel instead which is surprisingly - _nice_ , considering. She makes him run late afterwards by giving him a detailed list of their failings and successes as duet partners (“Mostly successes, though!” is how she finished her semi-offensive spiel).

On his way out he stops at his locker, trying to find a way to cram another three books into his already full satchel when someone walks out of the locker room and yanks it off of his shoulder altogether, holding it upside-down so everything spills out in a hard, knocking rush to the floor. 

Kurt watches, numbly.

Karofsky throws his bag down next to the mess afterwards. He tips his head up, giving Kurt a mean smile as he backs away down the hallway. “Watch where you’re going.”

He walks off, shoes squeaking across the linoleum until he’s out the door, and Kurt stands completely still until he’s gone, then presses back against the lockers with his eyes shut and accepts that it’s a bad day all around - it’s a bad day, and his Gucci bag has been thrown onto the sticky, _gross_ school floor and even _Rachel_ felt bad about how socially pathetic he was. It doesn’t really get worse than today does.

Sighing, he reluctantly gets down on his knees and starts sorting his things away again, trying not to get angry or upset because it’s never any use on days like this. His eyes water anyway, and it’s been such a shitty month back already that he doesn’t even want to _think_ about -

“Kurt?”

Oh, no.

He turns to see Sam hurrying over, eyebrows knitted in concern. He immediately drops down beside Kurt starts picking up his scattered things, straightening them, handing them over. Kurt doesn’t look at him when he takes his books and pens from Sam’s hands, feeling oddly ashamed for being found this way, for being bullied, even: it never stops feeling humiliating.

“It was Karofsky, wasn’t it?” Sam says, not really asking. He sounds sort of pissed off. He leans down and collects Kurt’s last few highlighters, and the small shield brooch Kurt keeps on his bag strap. His mouth twitches at it a little before he hands it over, then stands up and reaches for Kurt, helping him back onto his feet again, too.

Kurt tries to appear unfazed, holding the books that won’t squeeze into his bag tightly to his chest and tilting his head up, making sure to look Sam straight in the eyes even if he feels almost too embarrassed for it. “Thank you.”

Shaking his head, Sam huffs out a small sigh. “I’m really sorry this shit happens to you,” he says, lowly. He reaches his hand out to squeeze Kurt’s shoulder and Kurt instinctively has to look up into his face, at the small, genuine smile Sam is giving him. 

His smile spreads wider, and hardens. “You’re really cool, Kurt.”

It takes Kurt a little aback to hear it from almost a complete stranger. His mouth twitches reflexively at hearing it, and he wants to tell Sam how sweet he is, or how good, or how nice a guy he seems, but he bites it all down because now he knows what everything he could say to Sam would sound to everyone else. 

He just smiles, tentatively, still a little shocked and momentarily in love. “Thanks again.” He pulls his bag tighter around himself and then adds, hesitatingly, “I kind of... needed to hear something like that right now. So thanks for that, too.”

Sam grins at him lopsidedly, shrugs with both hands stuffed into his pockets and walks with him to the parking lot. The moment stretches on and on.

-

Glee club is better the next week, because Kurt loves _Rocky Horror Picture Show_ and never thought that even Mr Schuester would let them fall to its level of inappropriateness, which is both fun and uncomfortable at the same time, which is the new theme of New Directions, really. Not that he’s complaining; although he would have appreciated getting in on some of the Britney action he fought for. This kind of makes up for it.

“You know that thing for glee club,” Sam whispers to him in history, during a long, droning Hagberg explanation on trench warfare. His face screws up in thought. “ _The Last Picture Show_?”

Kurt side-eyes him a little then looks forward and pretends to be paying attention again. “You mean _Rocky Horror_?” he asks, glancing briefly down at Sam’s page where he finds a small but impressive doodle of a tank making a thumbs-up. His mouth twitches.

“Yeah, that. What, uh - what is that?”

The sort of movie Kurt really doesn’t know how to _begin_ explaining. “Extremely long and complicated,” he answers, voice hushed. He hasn’t heard any of this lesson, which makes him panic slightly but more than that, feel strangely thrilled. “It’d be easier just to watch it - I should have it somewhere.”

Sam turns to him, and Kurt sees him blinking in the corner of his eye. “So, is it cool if I stop by to watch it or something? ‘Cause all the balding blond wigs and leather corsets in the choir room are really confusing me.”

Kurt stops himself before he can turn to Sam in surprise and makes his eyes look less noticeably wide. He just says, easily, “Sure,” and can’t help the giddy feeling in his stomach spreading when Sam answers with a big, crooked smile in thanks.

-

The reason Kurt chooses a night his dad’s out for Sam to come over and doesn’t tell any of his friends about it is really all down to the way he _knows_ they’d react to it. They’d tell him to back off again, like it’s fundamentally wrong for Kurt to be friends with attractive straight guys - or even dangerous.

Even though he can’t help the awkward endearment he feels whenever Sam grins at him or painstakingly copies from his neat notes in class when it goes too fast for him, Sam is the kind of person Kurt wants to be friends with. Good-hearted, like Mercedes and Tina (and sometimes, admittedly, Rachel) - only with a penis. He wishes he could say he doesn’t get the big deal, but everyone’s made it so clear to him that it _is_ one, and it makes him kind of anxious on Friday after school when he’s sitting around his house, waiting for Sam to knock on his door.

_Don’t be stupid_ , he tells himself, but he feels uneasy anyway and can’t escape the image of Finn’s disapproving look no matter how hard he tries to distract himself with refluffing couch pillows and triple-checking the kitchen for more of his dad’s hidden candy-bars.

A knock sounds almost right on time, and then Sam Evans is standing in his doorway with his hands thrust into the pockets of his hoodie and his lopsided smile directed up at Kurt.

“Hey,” Sam greets, slipping one hand from his pocket to give an awkward little wave.

Kurt smiles back, as casually as he can. “Hey, Sam.” He opens the door wider to let him inside and Sam pauses first to wipe his shoes off on the mat before stepping in, almost nervously. 

He digs into one of his pockets. “I bought candy and everything, I swear, I just couldn’t not give it to my brother and sister when they asked, so...” 

With a triumphant smile he pulls out a small bag of M&M’S, shaking it slightly so the insides rattle. “Thank God for peanut allergies. If you have a really tiny bowl or something we could share all like... ten of these M&M’S.”

Kurt laughs and leads him towards the kitchen, feeling himself relax - because Sam’s just a nice guy. Sam doesn’t care. “I do,” he replies, helpfully pulling a small enough bowl out of one of the bottom cupboards. He opens another one filled with healthy replacement snacks for his dad and sweeps his hand over it. “And look - there’s even bigger, serves-two-people food in here.”

Sam whistles, impressed. “Healthy, too.”

Not wanting to explain why there are bags of baby carrots where chocolate bars are in any other house, Kurt grabs the least bland looking snacks he sees and takes Sam down the staircase to the basement, hoping kind of desperately that he doesn’t notice the embarrassingly cliche family photos on the wall (which he’s still aware that he’s placed beautifully).

But he knows Sam sees when they get down to his room and he says, looking surprised, “Your dad looks kind of scary.”

Kurt smiles. Having Sam down in his room makes him nervous and weirdly, slightly worried again, but he ignores the feeling. “He kind of is.” He fidgets with the sleeve of his shirt for an moment, feeling awkward in the middle of his room with a practical stranger. 

He gestures vaguely, says, “You should -”

“Yeah,” Sam agrees, nodding, and after a moment of hesitation he sets himself down on the fluffy rug in front of the television on Kurt’s dresser. “Wow,” he says, running his long hands across it. He looks up at Kurt. “This is crazy soft.”

It takes a minute or two to set everything up, including trouble over finding the right channel and plugging the right things into the TV that Sam unsuccessfully tries to help with, and then the movies on, and it’s quiet, and Kurt sits a little far away from him up on the bed, barely taking the movie in because the situation is so foreign - not like staying up late with Finn or movie marathons at Artie’s.

But Sam just passes the tiny bowl of M&M’s to him with a smile and whispers, “Tim Curry is awesome,” and then turns back to the television like it’s all completely okay.

-

On Monday afternoon, Sam drops next to Kurt at the New Directions lunch-table - which is pretty far from his usual seat with the football team.

“I have something to show you,” he tells Kurt, who continues to stare at him along with Artie, the only other person there. He’s grinning. “You should tell me if it’s a complete failure or something.”

He clears his throat and pauses. Then: “ _Give yourself over to absolute pleasure_.”

Kurt stares. Artie stares.

Sam grins and looks back at him, waiting for his judgement. 

“Frank-N-Furter,” Kurt realises aloud, eyes still too wide. He replays it in his head while trying to will his face not to burn anymore, then turns to Sam, knowing he must look a little surprised. “That was - actually pretty great.”

“Thanks.” Sam looks down at the sandwich in his hands when he talks - a cucumber sandwich, which Kurt blinks at mostly because he never knew it was a _thing_. “I like doing impressions and stuff. I can’t really do anything like that for my character in it, except, y’know...” He picks a tiny cube of cucumber off of his lunch. “Be shirtless.”

Kurt’s face becomes even warmer. He gets brain-freeze after a too long drink of slushie that he takes only to avoid looking at either of the other boys at the table. Artie keeps nudging at his side though, and Kurt knows if he turns around he’ll get that _look_ Artie gives him every time a vaguely attractive guy passes them by - the one that just makes Kurt feel a little confused about Artie himself.

He straightens, giving Sam a quick smile and then accidentally thinking of Sam, half-hidden by the a shower stall but not so much that Kurt doesn’t see enough rippling pectoral and rock-hard ab to know Sam’s kind of annoyingly appealing shirtless. “You don’t have anything to worry about, anyway,” he says, mostly to himself.

He isn’t sure if Sam hears, but then he shoots he and Artie a grin and, after wiping his mouth on his hand, tells them, “You guys’ll be great, too.”

Even though Kurt already knows that and Sam’s just saying it to be friendly, it’s still nice to hear, and he picks at his lunch with a smile until Artie practically jams his elbow into his side just to point from him to Sam and give him a thumbs up.

-

Things are almost going well for a change, until the Karofsky situation escalates more than ever before. It’s near constant now, and the only time he isn’t worried about it is around Finn or Puck or Mike, or sometimes Sam on their way out of class. Even then, Karofsky gives him this look that follows him around all day, heavy and _scary_ in the back of his mind, and he talks to Mr Schue about it, even Miss Pillsbury, but comes away with nothing as always, discounting some more misunderstandings and useless pamphlets.

He doesn’t tell his dad. For a few brief days he does consider it, but then he finds a strangely expensive shopping bag in his dad’s room with an engagement ring inside, and he decides against it, because his dad has too much on his plate as it is going back to work right now as well, and Kurt will not be what pushes him off the edge again.

Part of him wishes that someone else would notice without him having to spell it out. The skin of his back is starting to bruise badly: the colour of it makes him feel sick and angry and hopeless, so he layers himself up and tries to move past it.

“Hit back,” Puck hisses at him one day. “We could both take him. Or I could real-hit him and you could _West Side Story_ hit him.”

They’ve just passed Karofsky in the corridor, and while Kurt responded to his glare by trying to look away from him, Puck responded by glaring back and asking with a deeper voice than he has, “Problem?” Kurt had to yank him forward by the strap of his bag and then listen to all his bitching about it.

Puck pulls him off to the side, beside the lockers and away from the crowd of people getting to their next class. “Look, you think the school is going to do anything about this? You think one day he’ll wake up and decide _not_ to be an asshole?” He jolts Kurt by the arm, staring down at him hard with his jaw tensed. “Wake the fuck up, Kurt.”

Yanking his arm out of Puck’s grip, Kurt gives him a dirty look. “What do you want me to do about it? I’m not getting into trouble for trying to fight someone that equals _three_ of me when I know it won’t solve anything. It would just make him worse.” Puck still looks too mad, holding his bag strap with white-knuckled hands and staring down at him darkly. Kurt shakes his head. “And you’re not getting into this, because you just got out of juvie, Puck, so leave it.”

He starts walking again, quicker this time, and here’s Puck angrily yelling after him, “So you’re gonna do _nothing_?”

-

School after that is a new kind of horrible, where Puck’s back to treating him like shit and everyone else still acts like he isn’t being thrown around the corridors like a ragdoll. When he offers to go to Dalton, it isn’t all for New Directions - it’s for him.

He meets Blaine, and forgets to take notes on the Warblers (except he’s aware that they’re _good_ ) or actually be a spy, and then after finally discussing being bullied with someone, Blaine drives him out to get coffee.

He looks at Kurt across the table with his warm smile and says, quietly, “I know what it’s like. There’s so much hate in towns like this.” He squeezes his coffee in his hand. “Don’t let it get to you, Kurt.”

“I normally don’t,” he replies, and he’s glad to know how honest that really is. He holds his full styrofoam cup with both hands and no intention of drinking it. The idea alone makes him feel sick - talking about this is so strange it’s sickly. “But this guy just won’t stop, and I don’t know how to make him.”

Blaine told him earlier, _confront him_. But that’s too risky, he thinks, and in comparison to what that might lead Karofsky to do the purple skin on his back seems like nothing at all.

It’s what Blaine thinks would solve it though. He smiles, reassuringly, then gives Kurt a hard look over his drink that he knows is asking him to think it over.

-

He does.

-

The kiss is by far the scariest thing to happen yet. He feels even more lost afterwards, has even less of an idea what to do. Telling his dad or Finn or Mercedes would end terribly - and maybe in everyone else knowing, too, and even with the things Karofsky’s done he doesn’t want to out him to the entire school.

“It’s a real mess,” Blaine tells him over the phone. He’s an outsider - telling him is fine, Kurt assures himself, mostly because he has to have someone to talk to. He even offers to come talk to Karofsky, but so far Karofsky hasn’t so much as looked Kurt in the eye again, so he says it’s best to drop it for a while, and before hanging up Blaine reminds him, lowly, “If things get worse, there’s always Dalton.”

It’s way out of his family’s price-range, but Kurt still has some pamphlets and brochures stashed in his bag that he glances at sometimes. He can’t imagine himself there, in uniform, without any of his friends or any bullying. If he had the option, he wouldn’t know what to choose anymore.

“What’s that?” Sam asks, peeking over his shoulder.

Kurt jumps, spreading his hands to cover the big, bold _Dalton Boys’ Academy_ on what he’s reading and reaching for his bag to hide it away again. “It’s nothing,” he assures him, waving the pamphlet dismissively, but Sam is just staring at him.

He already knows.

“Are you...” He lowers his voice, looking around at where Tina sits in the back to make sure she isn’t listening. When he looks at Kurt there’s more concern in his face than anything else. “Is it that bad?”

Reflexively, Kurt goes to say no, it isn’t, because he’s used to saying that - he’s too proud to act like he can’t handle boys he _knows_ he’s better than, especially to people he doesn’t know so well. But Sam keeps looking at him with his worried eyes, and Kurt is tired of not talking about it to his friends.

“It’s just too much,” he explains, trying to keep his voice steady. He pulls his books out off his bag and sets them down, keeping his head high and his gaze off of Sam as he adds, softer, “I don’t know how to deal with it anymore. I never really have.”

“God,” Sam exhales. He shakes his head, staring into space. “You shouldn’t have to leave because of him.”

Kurt nods, blankly looking down at whatever random page he’s turned to. It feels almost certain that he’ll eventually have to go. Karofsky’s calm now, maybe, but that just worries him more because he knows it can’t last. He knows something much worse could happen if he sticks around too long.

“What if you had, like,” Sam squints his face up, biting his lip, “Protection?” He turns to Kurt, earnest. “I could look out for you. I want to look out for you, really. He can’t start anything with me since I’m on the team with him, Coach Beiste has a rule against it.”

He nudges Kurt’s leg with his knee, watching him inquisitively with his lips pressed together.

“I couldn’t ask you to do that, Sam,” Kurt tells him, shaking his head. “It’s not your problem.”

Suddenly the weight of Sam’s hand is on his shoulder, and the class is quiet except for the teacher’s voice.

Sam’s jaw is tense. “Guys like that are my problem,” he replies, voice hushed but aggressive. “You haven’t done anything wrong; you’re not leaving because of him, okay?”

He smiles, squeezing Kurt’s shoulder again, and when Kurt looks at him he finds himself unable to say the word _no_.

-

Having Sam take him everywhere would have been much more helpful when Kurt was getting harassed every day, he can’t help but think. Not that he’s complaining or anything.

Part of him thinks Sam is still trying to work out where he stands in Mckinley's social ladder – he doesn't quite fit in with the jocks, and he doesn't know the glee club too well yet, either. He just sort of drifts in between, with enough popularity backing him up that nobody starts anything with him but not enough to save him from a slushie facial whenever Azimio is feeling bored.

Like today.

“Aw, man,” Sam says once they’ve reached the bathroom’s safety. He wipes some more red ice out of his eyes and gives Kurt a squinted once-over. “He totally ruined your _Matrix_ coat.”

Kurt shrugs, acting much less heartbroken about it than he feels. “I’ll find a way to save it.” He hands Sam a few dozen paper towels and gets to work on drying his newly public-sink washed hair, making a face of disgust in the mirror. “I should have spare clothes in my locker.” He frowns at Sam from the corner of his eye. “Have you got anything else to wear?”

Sam glances down at the red explosion on his blue shirt. “What’s wrong with this?”

Smiling, Kurt layers some more paper towels against Sam’s chest, all of which stick there, soaking up the slushie. “I might have something that fits you. Possibly. But the top priority right now is cleaning your hair because it’s like... a neon massacre up there.”

Sam’s eyebrows raise, amused. “I think you called it that once without the slushie in it.”

Flashing a smile, Kurt turns the warm tap on again (it’s still freezing, of course) and gives Sam an indicative push on the back. Sam obligingly leans forward and washes his hair out by pushing his fingers through clumps. Most of the red dye blends into the water, swirls down the drain, and the rest gives Sam’s hair a ginger tinge when he straightens again and rubs at it with a handful of damp paper towels.

“Good enough?” He grins. “Does it still look glow in the dark or whatever?”

“Adequate,” Kurt tells him after a considering pause. He opens the bathroom door, digging into the pocket of his ruined jacket for his locker key. “And yes - but I mean that in the nicest way.”

Sam laughs and steps out after him. “Of course.”

-

By the time Mr Schue gets sick, Kurt has a constant bodyguard by his side. Puck catches on to what Sam’s doing, and insists he go away so Puck can do the job right whenever he finds them in the corridors, which is both kind of funny and kind of annoying. Mercedes gets a lot more confrontational with the jocks, so much so that they move out of her way in the halls while Kurt hangs onto her arm and Rachel and Finn take him around sometimes, but fail to be threatening in any way.

The best protection is Santana.

She talks to him while giving everyone in a ten metre perimeter her best bitch face. “Have you seen the new sub?”

Miss Holiday took he and Sam for history yesterday, and Kurt loved her both for being infinitely more interesting than Mrs Hagberg and dressing infinitely better than any other faculty member in any school in Lima. And teaching through song, which Kurt thought was limited to _Disney_ movies alone. “What about her?”

“Other than the TILF factor and the fact she could get it any which way, I was thinking about asking her to take over glee club while Mr Schuester heals from - whatever sickness a lifetime of being a loser gives you. I physically can’t take any more of Berry’s crap, if this keeps going my fist will just plant itself into her face. _So_.” She puts a firm hand at the small of his back, guiding him towards Miss Holiday’s classroom door.

She raps on it, then quickly disappears from his side.

Before he can yell her into returning, Miss Holiday peeks out at him with a smile and asks, “Can I help you?”

-

“Who’s that?”

Rachel openly stares at the screen of his phone, briefly glancing at him with curiosity. Then she brightens at the name of the sender flashing on the screen again, leaning closer to Kurt and saying in a quiet, enthused whisper, “It’s a _boy_!”

Kurt rolls his eyes, shifting away from her. “I’m aware. I’m also mildly terrified of that smile you’re giving me right now so if you could you make this,” he waves a hand across her face, “Not look - like that? I’d appreciate it.”

“You’re _defensive_ ,” Rachel notices, even more delighted. Kurt sighs.

Another few people trail into the choir room, none of them being Puck, who’s intent on finding some way to prank Miss Holiday, but one of them being Sam, who drops next to Rachel and receives more of her annoyingly excited grinning and crazy-eyes. After a moment of looking at her he inches further away on his seat and looks at Kurt above her head to ask, “Why’s she doing that?”

The answer is a weird, embarrassing squeak Rachel lets out.

“Kurt has a secret boy,” she informs the room helpfully, her voice completely calm; but there’s way too much sparkling going on in her eyes for Kurt’s liking.

Santana fistpumps the air, which quickly turns into just lewdly pumping it with her hand. “Get it, Hummel.”

Artie moves his arms at his side to imitate thrusting. Mercedes gives him a smile over his shoulder because she’s seen Blaine’s picture when he called once and immediately came to Rachel’s conclusion. Finn is frowning in confusion, staring off into space and looking like he’s trying to remember if he knows the boy he doesn’t know.

Sam stares at him.

“The Dalton kid?” he asks after a moment, blankly.

At this, Rachel’s mood turns. She whips her head around to stare intently into his face, apparently trying to work out whether he’s given any of New Directions zero competition plans away.

Kurt ignores her and nods, looking resolutely down at his phone. “Blaine.”

“ _Blaine_ ,” Rachel repeats with a hand over her heart. She exchanges an emotional smile with Mercedes, her mind already changed again.

Beside her, Sam looks away from him. Kurt can see him picking at his nicest pair of jeans. “So, you guys are still -”

“This must be the New Directions!” Miss Holiday’s voice pipes up, and Kurt looks up to find her in the choir room doorway, ushering Puck - who has his head down and is carrying a weirdly big box of butter - to his seat.

She walks into the middle of the class, smiling. “Let’s start with some introductions. My name is Holly Holiday. What’s yours?” She turns to Puck, clicking her fingers at him. “ _Go_.”

-

Miss Holiday is nothing like Mr Schuester, which means Kurt finishes _Forget You_ feeling slightly guilty for willing him to stay sick for the rest of the month, at least.

Sam waits for him while he tugs his coat on and slips his bag over his shoulder, patiently as always.

“It’s just the parking lot, Sam,” Kurt tells him, trying to sound less fond and disgustingly smitten than he knows he does. It’s just the parking lot, but Kurt still doesn’t mind walking with Sam there and listening to an eventful retelling of something scary that happened to him during a few hours of _Amnesia_ last night. He doesn’t mind the idea that Sam’s willing to give up time for him.

“Parking lots are dangerous,” Sam insists, mock-serious. “Lots of cars. Lots of bad teenage driving.”

Kurt’s mouth twitches and he leads Sam down the rows of chairs. “I take offense to that.”

They pass Miss Holiday on the way out, who’s sitting at the piano with her legs crossed and arms resting on the wood covering the keys while she watches them with her bright, odd smile.

“Boy, you two are adorable,” she states, simply, and Kurt stops dead in his tracks to stare at her.

Flustered, he starts trying to protest. “We’re not -”

“ _So_ ,” she interrupts, either not hearing him or not caring, and stands up, watching them with her Santana-esque smile. “What duets are on your list? I’m going to assume that this hormonal highschool glee club has a thing about serenading, and that most of it comes from the girl who was mad she wasn’t singing today.”

“This isn’t -” Kurt tries again.

This time Sam’s the one to cut him off. “We were going to sing together once but, uh.” He glances at Kurt. “It didn’t pan out.”

She shakes her head, putting herself between them with her arms slung over both their shoulders. “Don’t let all the heteros take the spotlight, kids.” She walks them to the classroom door, making a thoughtful face. 

“Hey, new assignment.” She lets them go and points at them, instead. “I want that duet, alright? And hey, it’s not a Catholic school - go as gay as you want. Wave that rainbow flag.” 

“Uh,” Kurt says, but she just walks past them, waving over her shoulder and saying, “Sayonara!”

He turns to Sam, still almost gaping and _knowing_ his cheeks are stupidly flushed. 

But Sam’s as unfussed as ever. “A duet sounds like fun.” He flashes Kurt a smile. 

There’s a moment of staring, then Kurt just says, agreeably, “It could be.”

-

Unfortunately, Sam’s house turns out to be the worst place to try and get anything done ever because his brother and sister apparently never leave his side while he’s in the house and beg him to play the _Super Mario_ theme song as fast as he can whenever they see him with his guitar.

“We should have done this at your place,” Sam says almost apologetically after his siblings have successfully infiltrated his room and pawed at both of them for the last half hour.

Stacey has made herself at home on Kurt’s lap and told him a dozen times with her crooked Evans smile that he sounds like a princess when he sings - which he takes as a compliment since she so obviously intends it as one - and Stevie strumming the guitar in clunky notes while Sam holds in the chords. They haven’t really done anything of value glee-wise yet, but Kurt isn’t fussed anyway, especially since the number of platonic duets he and Sam would sound good on is tiny and basically just a catalogue of songs Sam has never heard.

Kurt shrugs, letting Stacey tug the hat off his head after she asks. “It’s fine. We don’t _have_ to do a duet, so.”

From across the bed, Sam looks up from his guitar, blond bangs flopping across his forehead. “I think we should,” he insists.

“I think you should,” Stevie agrees, looking mostly unaware of what they’re talking about.

Sam pats his little brother’s head. “If we do, you guys’ll need to leave us alone for a bit.”

“Oh.” Stevie blinks at him, then looks back down at the guitar again, continuing his strumming. “I think you shouldn’t, then.”

It takes Sam’s dad coming in to convince the kids to leave, reluctantly, although Stacey stops on her way to the door to make them pinky-promise they’ll play her their song later, then it’s just he and Sam alone in his room while Sam retunes his guitar and Kurt fidgets with his phone in his pocket.

“I have a song idea,” Sam tells him without looking up. His tongue peeks out of his mouth in his concentration.

Kurt looks away. “Oh?”

Sam yanks his guitar strap over his head, setting it down on the bed and pulling open the drawer beside it. “I was looking up other musicals and stuff - there was nothing else like _Rocky Horror_ , but that’s okay since I’m pretty sure if the show had ever happened Mr Schue would have been sent to jail, probably.” He pulls some slightly crumpled sheets of paper out, staring down at it intently. “I found this song I like,” he half-mumbles.

There’s a pause before Sam hands it over to him, and he finds himself looking down at the shamelessly sappy lyrics of _Falling Slowly_ and almost chokes.

“Not that I’m not impressed that you chose _Once_ or that I don’t love this song,” he starts, keeping his voice steady, “but isn’t this... a little too romantic?” He looks at Sam with a raised eyebrow, questioning.

Sam tilts his head as if he’s thinking about it. “Well, I sang that song with Quinn and I knew her way less than I know you now. I don’t think I even found a duet that wasn’t _kind_ of romantic.” He turns to Kurt. “Is that too weird for you?”

No, but it should be too weird for _him_. Kurt glances at him briefly then just shrugs, shakes his head, says, “Of course not,” even though just thinking of singing any of this to Sam is making him inwardly freak out. He wonders what the club would think if they ever had to sing this in front of them. He wonders whose idea they’re assume it was. He knows he has accurate guesses for both.

Sam starts playing the first few notes, testing them out. Kurt has this infuriating _thing_ about instruments and big hands that makes something in his stomach heat up every time Sam’s fingertip so much as brushes a string.

“I know it’s really cheesy,” Sam admits, still playing (and still driving Kurt kind of crazy). “I think we can own it.” 

He flashes Kurt a quick smile, and opens his mouth to sing.

-

The next time they see Miss Holiday, she’s by Mr Schuester’s side in the choir room, and they’re planning some mash-up hurrah before she leaves again. She waves at Kurt when he takes his seat and mouths at him, _Good weekend?_ while pointing her thumb at Sam and making a face Kurt never wanted a teacher to direct at him.

He’s pretty sure she’s taken the Mckinley method with her student’s problems, where they’re all kind of forgotten under her own - which in this case is weird sexual tension with Mr Schue that Mercedes keeps pretending to retch at by his side.

Sam gives him a disappointed smile, and he forces it back. He doesn’t know why he’s so relieved.

-

The guarding dies down after Kurt insists it’s unnecessary, that the brunt of the bullying is over, and then right on time, it starts up again.

He’s setting the binder of plans for his dad and Carole’s wedding back into his locker when he finds Karofsky stares him down across the hallway, then making his way over, eyes dark, and Kurt backs up against his locker but resolutely stares back, telling himself there’s nothing to be afraid of. There’s nothing he can do to him here.

Karofsky is in front of him, too close for Kurt to feel comfortable at all.

“Question for you,” he says, voice low and dangerous, “You tell anyone else what happened? How you - you kissed me?”

Kurt takes a small step back but keeps staring him right in the eye, back straight, _unafraid_ , he tells himself. “You kissed me, Karofsky,” he corrects, and even though he says it quietly Karofsky checks around them anyway, looking slightly panicked. “And I understand how hard this is for you to deal with, so no. I haven’t told anyone.”

Karofsky’s expression hardens again, and he leans close enough for Kurt to instinctively move back, flinching. “Good.” A muscle in his jaw twitches. “You keep it that way. ‘Cause if you do,” he looks around again, then right at Kurt, and tells him, “I’m gonna _kill_ you.”

He stares at Kurt for another minute, then stalks away with his head down, and Kurt presses back as closely to the lockers as he can because he feels like he might fall over if he doesn’t.

-

Sam isn’t in history. Kurt shouldn’t have told him, but he was _tired_ of telling nobody.

He tries not to listen to the other students in class, because he knows what’s happening. He refuses to hear about it, and sits all of class feeling sick and not doing any work and imagining what could be happening to Sam, what he’ll tell the teachers if he gets caught, how his _dad_ will react.

They call him out of class, right in time to catch his father still dressed in his overalls shoving Karofsky against the noticeboard with an arm across his throat.

“Dad,” he calls out, and pulls on his father’s arms when he’s reached him, scared of the look in his eye. He’s never been scared of his dad before. “Dad, let him go, just -”

“He really say that to you, Kurt?” Burt asks without looking away from Karofsky’s face.

Kurt tugs his arms again and looks at the teachers over his dad’s shoulder, all looking variations of shocked and concerned. “Let him go.”

His dad glances at him and softens at the look on his face, eventually relenting and pulling away. “You’d better not so much as look my kid in the eye again,” he warns, giving him a look. He puts a hand on Kurt’s arm and leads him into the principals office, where Finn, Carole, and Sam are already waiting.

Sam’s face is bruised in purple and yellow, but when he sees Kurt staring at him, wide-eyed, he quickly shoves his ice-pack back against it and gives Kurt a look at his scarring knuckles.

“Mr Hummel,” Figgins says, closing the door of his office. Karofsky is visible through the glass outside, sitting waiting on his father, and his dad won’t stop staring at him. “I think we need to talk.”

-

Sam and Karofsky both get suspended. Kurt gets an offer from his dad to go to Dalton, and talks to Blaine about it, then Rachel, because she calls him that night sounding tearful and worried for his safety and for some reason, can’t hang up on her.

“I don’t want to leave, but -”

“It’s Mckinley’s fault,” Rachel interrupts, sounding completely outraged. She lets out a frustrated sigh he can picture perfectly in his mind. “Something needs to be done about the bullying, it’s _ridiculous_ \- I was talking to my dads about it earlier and they agree. They’re setting up a meeting with Figgins as we speak.”

Kurt absorbs this, and doesn’t even mind being cut off because he likes how passionate Rachel talks about this, and how she’s the kind of person that gets these things done when she wants to. “What do you think they can do?”

On the other line, there’s the sound of Rachel taking a deep breath, and the rustle of paper. “Bully prevention club, less solutions to personal problems via pamphlet, a GSA, stricter rule enforcement, less teachers who look like probable bigots, more teaching about inclusiveness - maybe even workshops, I’m sure that’s a thing...”

She talks all night, and her voice starts to grate but it’s the best distraction from all the things Kurt really can’t face yet.

-

Like Sam. He shows up at Kurt’s house on Saturday with the skin around his eye a deep blue, and stays on the doorstep for a while, even when Kurt opens the door as wide as it can go and nods him inside.

“I want to apologise for - you know.” He clears his throat, frowning, and underneath him his feet shift and shuffle anxiously. “I really want to, but I’m not sorry, so... I guess I’m sorry for not being sorry, kind of.” He looks down. “I know it wasn’t my place.”

Instead of trying to convince Sam to come inside again, Kurt slips on the closest pair of shoes by the door and steps outside with him, clutching himself a little against the slight chill. He looks up at Sam, and Sam’s eyes are sad and bruised and every time Kurt sees his black eye he feels his heart twist in his chest.

“You don’t have to, anyway.” He holds himself tighter and thinks of more words he doesn’t know if he should tell Sam, or any straight guy. Then he decides just to be honest, because Sam deserves that much from him.

“It was nice,” he says, softly, only hesitating a little, “Having someone care that much. So thank you.”

He reaches out and gives Sam’s arm a light squeeze, smiling. Sam smiles back.

It lasts a little too long, so Kurt drops his arm again, almost hastily, and steps back towards the front door, gesturing inside again. “Want to give me a hand picking between flowers for the wedding?”

Sam’s smile stretches, and he shrugs one shoulder. “Sure. I mean, I didn’t know there were more wedding flower options than roses, but this can be like Wedding Planning 101 for me.”

“It’ll come in handy,” Kurt assures him, and he leads Sam inside.

-

Kurt ensures that his dad’s wedding is perfect in every way, and even though it has to be hastily planned in under two weeks notice and even though the stress of choosing between two colour samples for the napkins which both Finn and Mercedes insist there are no differences between almost makes his brain explode, it works out, in the end.

On the car-ride to the reception, Finn cries next to him which is totally okay because Kurt’s been crying since an hour before the ceremony. 

“This is dumb,” Finn mumbles to himself with an unsteady voice, rubbing at his red eyes with the cuff of his suit jacket. He looks at the driver worriedly, scared he’s been caught, then gives Kurt his anxious smile. “It feels like more of a big deal than I thought it’d be. Having a brother and a dad and a bedroom I can stand up in.”

Kurt doesn’t even try to stop crying, because he knows there’s no use. He dabs his eyes with the the tissues Rachel pressed into his hand after the ceremony, but once he starts it’s always hard to stop. “It’s kind of huge,” he agrees, handing the packet over to Finn, who takes one with a low, “Thanks,” and proceeds to blow his nose as obnoxiously loud as humanly possible.

They sit in silence for another moment, and Kurt thinks of all the blips in their friendship and all the embarrassing, pre-teen fantasies of what it could become - and he realises that everything has changed, now, because Kurt can’t not automatically forgive his family, and everything that happened with them before feels neatly swept away or at least _easier_ , now.

Finn shifts beside him, then his arm sets down heavily across Kurt’s shoulders and they sit that way for the rest of the ride, Kurt only having to dab at his eyes once more during all of it.

-

The reception is fun, for the most part. Kurt dances with all the girls, watches his parents dance together, has a song dedicated in his honour, clinks a lot of fizzy champagne glasses with Mercedes and Tina, and it’s all going relatively well for a New Directions get-together until his eyes finally find Sam, who’s been missing most of the night, sitting in a warmly lit, mostly empty corner of the room with one of Finn’s dark haired, pretty cousins next to him, pulling at his hand.

He looks away and takes a long sip. Even though he knows it shouldn’t make him feel like shit, it still does. 

He just sits on the sidelines with Santana on the opposite side of his table, who pulls a tiny flask out from her cleavage to pour into her drink and looks up once at the dancing couples to say, “ _Ugh_.” He tries not to turn to his right, where Sam is leading some nice girl into a unsteady, bumbling attempt at a dance, and thinks about his new family and friends and definitely not the purpling bruise on the side of Sam’s face that Kurt sees like a tattoo saying ‘this was your idiot fault’ every time.

Someone takes the seat beside him, heavily dropping down onto it. It’s Puck, who sits facing the dance-floor, holding his glass in one hand while he undoes the first button of his shirt with the other. He takes a drink and then pauses thoughtfully before saying around the rim, “If it makes you feel better, she’s only like a _seven_ , at best.”

Kurt narrows his eyes at him, then goes back to resolutely staring at the wall. 

Puck’s knee nudges at him inquisitively. He gives Kurt a completely, weirdly sincere look. “I’ll dance with you, if you want. Let’s be honest - Sam’s dancing is on par with _Finn’s_ , so at least with me your partner will be able to tell the difference between his feet.” He flashes a quick, suggestive smile. “And look how handsome, too.”

Despite fully intending to stay in a horrible mood, Kurt’s smiles, involuntarily. “As persuasive as you are, I think I’ll have to pass.” He lets his smile spread a little. “But thank you.”

Puck shrugs. “Something to think about. And Christ, Kurt, don’t look so depressed. We just sang the sappiest song in the world to tell you how much we love you and all that gay shit. Here,” he pulls Kurt’s glass over to him, grabbing Santana’s flask from across the table and pouring in more than Kurt’s willing to put his throat through. “It’ll help,” Puck tells him, smiling and squeezing his shoulder.

Hopefully this isn’t Puck’s long-term solution to sadness, Kurt thinks, then he just sighs and takes a big enough drink for Puck to demand a high-five for after. 

“Cover for me,” he tells Puck, standing. He takes his glass and steps out of the noisy room, wandering the building a little until he finds the exit and an inviting looking stone set of stairs to perch on outside, cautiously placing his last tissue underneath him before sitting down.

For a while, he just sits there in the quiet, taking timely sips of his poisoned soda and feeling sleepier and sleepier the brighter the moon gets above him. He won’t let Sam being straight ruin his father’s wedding day, because that’s stupid and too boy-crazy, even by Kurt’s standards. He just needs a moment out here, away from his coupled friends and distant relatives and Sam.

Sam, who calls out to him a moment later and appears standing above him with his hands in his pockets, a little out of breath when he tells him, “I was looking for you.”

Kurt moves to stand up again, a little dizzy from alcohol, and almost stumbles right into Sam’s chest, but Sam steadies him just in time, big hands warm and comforting around his arms. “Found me,” he murmurs, looking up to give Sam a small smile.

After a pause, Sam smiles back, but his eyebrows are drawn slightly in concern - and that big, discoloured scar around his eye is making Kurt sort of ache. He lets go of Kurt, hands sliding down his arms then falling back to his sides. He raises one to scratch at his head, looking away, drops it again and gives Kurt a nervous grin. 

“I was wondering if you...” he starts, slowly, dragging out the last word before biting his lip, briefly shutting his eyes, and finishing with a less lively, “If you could teach me to dance, maybe.”

Kurt stares up at him, an eyebrow slowly raising. “It seemed like you were doing fine,” he answers coolly, even though he made sure not to look at Sam dancing at all and even though he really, really wants to do this.

“It’d be cool to not be guessing what to do the entire time, though.”

With a wry smile, Kurt sets his glass down somewhere safe from his giddy feet and tries to ignore the annoying, distracting feeling in his chest. He takes a step closer to Sam - but not too close, because this situation has a very real, very worrying possibility of getting too weird - and doesn’t object when Sam’s hand settles on his shoulder instead of his waist, because he’s kind of pleasantly surprised by it, even if it’s just because Sam has no idea how to lead.

He holds onto Sam’s waist and slips their hands together, raising them high and feeling alcohol-sick and love-sick which he finds is a pretty unpleasant combination at this moment in time. 

“If Finn can Waltz adequately enough you should be able to master it,” he mumbles to Sam, who snorts.

They repeat the same three steps over and over again in silence, and as Kurt gradually leans further into Sam’s body and Sam tips his head up to an uncomfortable angle so his chin constantly brushes Kurt’s hair he realises Sam hasn’t made any mistakes, hasn’t done anything wrong. He seems to know what he’s doing.

Kurt hums amusedly. “Looks like you’re already pretty good.”

Under his hands, Sam tenses slightly but doesn’t let him go or stop his feet. “Maybe you’re just a crazy good teacher,” he counters, voice soft.

Kurt smiles, and keeps on leaning his body closer to Sam’s until they’re half an inch from pressing together, and he can feel Sam’s breath making a tickling path through his hair and Sam’s hand starting to stick to his. It feels like it lasts longer than Kurt knows it could, and he pulls away quickly after the realisation.

“I think you’re good to go,” he says, suddenly breathless and red in the face. He makes himself smile and gestures his head to the entrance. “We should get back before they start looking for us.”

Sam just looks at him for a while, then he nods and follows him back inside. Kurt deals with the phantom touch of Sam’s hand in his for the rest of the night.

-

It’s painfully clear that Kurt needs to move on. He’s tired of liking boys and feeling hopeless about it, and he’s tired of Sam acting like it’s normal for them to spend all their time together, because when he asks Puck to be honest about what he thinks about it, he says that he thought they were fucking.

“What?” he asks when Kurt responds by giving him a hard look and flicking his paintbrush at his old, threadbare clothes, smattering them white. He’s doing his last week of community service, repainting a game-room in a retirement home, and Kurt is pitching in because he thinks Puck might be lonely. 

But Puck just rolls his eyes, slapping his paintbrush back against the wall and dragging it carelessly downwards. “You think everyone hasn’t been thinking that?”

Defiantly, Kurt drops his brush, crossing his arms and sitting stiffly on a newspaper-covered love seat. “Of course they have. I’m gay and Sam’s a guy, I must be in love with him,” he snaps. He does like Sam, he can’t deny it to himself, but it’s not simple like everyone thinks. None of it is really simple right now.

“ _Christ_ ,” Puck hisses, then he drops his brush too and turns to face Kurt, jaw tight. “Everyone thinks you’re banging because you constantly fucking _flirt_ , Kurt. And I _know_ you aren’t, so don’t bite my head off, but you can’t blame people for thinking, ‘wow, holy shit, all these two people do is look at each other like they’ll die if they don’t get to suck the others’ dick.’”

Kurt gapes at him, horrified, knowing he’s going completely red in the face. Then he hardens his expression and sneers. “You’re vile.”

With an aggravated sigh, Puck rolls his eyes again. “I’m telling you the truth.” His jaw relaxes, and he’s looking at Kurt without any frustration anymore, which must be as weird for him as it is for Kurt, because he quickly turns away, scratching his paint-patched neck. “You’re scared you’re gonna get hurt, right? So you should just go for it or call it quits, dude. No need drawing this shit out any longer.”

It’s a surprising thing to hear from him. Kurt looks at him for a moment, wide eyed, then swallows and looks away. “Yeah,” he says, noncommittally. If he goes for it, he’ll have to go through Sam telling him he’s straight then trying to let him down easy with his crooked, endearing grin and telling him they’ll stay friends, even though Kurt will have to move on, move away from him for good. If he calls it quits, they can’t be friends anymore, because Kurt’s past the point of looking at Sam like he’s anything but a unique, Sam Evans kind of perfect.

After a moment, Puck steps closer to him, and after another, he puts his hand on his shoulder and squeezes. “I’m rooting for you guys, y’know,” he tells him, quietly, while Kurt is trying to make himself stop.

-

The girl Kurt sits beside in math is insanely, ridiculously hot.

He knows when Finn looks at her he does that stupid, blatant staring thing with his mouth almost totally wide open, and he knows Puck’s positioned his chair in all his classes with her for maximum viewing pleasure, because they’re both gross that way. She’s Polish, with long blonde hair and grey eyes and a really great figure that makes Kurt wish they were closer so he could pick her clothes, sometimes, because she’s kind of gothic and tacky too.

But they get along well, and they like talking to each other, and when she asks Kurt for the blond boy he’s always hanging around with’s number he can’t think of any real reason to tell her no, so he doesn’t. He types it into her phone and thinks it should feel good to really let _go_ , but instead it kind of hurts, starts an ache in his chest that doesn’t go away the rest of the day, because Milena is beautiful when she smiles and tells him, “Thank you,” and he doesn’t think any boy in the world could think otherwise.

He sits the rest of the class staring at the brown roots of the girl sitting in front of him and not thinking of Sam kissing someone that isn’t him, spending all his time with someone else, falling in love with someone Kurt can never be.

“What’s wrong?” Rachel asks him immediately when he sits down at their lunch-table. She’s frowning at him and shifting closer, worriedly, with her eyebrows pulled almost completely together. Kurt forgives her for wearing a sweater with a cow on it because God, she can be sweet.

He presses his lips together and looks around, cautiously, but nobody else has arrived yet and none of the other tables care about what the glee club is talking about.

“I gave Sam’s number to a girl,” he explains, quietly, knowing he’s already said too much, but then it kind of pours out, in this big, hasty cluster, “And now I have to accept that he’ll never like me the way I like him, and I thought it would be easier than this but it _hurts_ worse than I thought it could.”

Wincing at himself, he turns to Rachel and just repeats, quieter but steadier, “It hurts,” because it really does. This constant, stupid pain inside of him. Thinking of letting go of Sam makes him feel burnt, and alone, and like he might _always_ be alone.

For a moment, Rachel stares at him with her mouth parted in surprise, and then her face scrunches up like it does before she cries and stays that way. She puts a light hand on Kurt’s then goes further, squeezing it in hers, and Kurt abruptly realises Rachel’s sort of one of his closest friends. They sit like that for a while, her fingers curled around his, and he knows she's searching for the right thing to say, something good to tell him, so he waits on her, wordlessly. 

When she has it, a small smile on her parting lips, her eyes go behind him and find something that makes her move away again, hand lingering over his briefly before Sam appears on the other side of the table and it flies back to her lap.

Sam smiles at them both, more tight-lipped than usual, and pulls his bag strap over his head before setting it down. He sits across from them, oddly tense. "Hey, guys.” 

He doesn't look at Kurt, not once, and Kurt hates himself for being so wary of it, feeling so wounded by it. Sam rustles through his bag for his lunch, jaw looking tight, and Kurt tries not to look at him, either. Even though he knows he won't eat, he takes his lunch out, too, and Rachel hesitatingly goes back to hers, glancing at them both from the corner of her eyes.

She seems to gather that it's _awkward_ , and that neither of them seem especially like talking – which is fine, because Rachel's specialty is loudly filling in silences. 

She turns to Kurt, visibly forcing herself to beam at him like usual, and pats his leg. "You know, Kurt, my dads cancelled our Saturday family shopping trip," she starts, and then her eagerness becomes realer, happier. "We should make some plans. I think our first duet really was a _huge_ success – both personally and musically – and I've been thinking we should pair up again for another song. We can prepare for it early this weekend; I know we're both technically sound, but it never hurts to be well-rehearsed, and considering we did our first one completely unprepared and it turned out as commendable, who knows how good we'd be with practice." 

She loses a little of her enthusiasm, pushing her pasta around her plastic plate and looking down at it instead of him. "If you want to do it, that is."

Kurt blinks down at her, weirdly touched. “That sounds great, Rachel,” he tells her. He feels himself start to smile, feels _better_ , and when he turns around again Sam’s looking back at him with his lips together tightly, and it all fades.

Sam looks away and takes a too-long drink of his slushie. 

It’s quiet for another moment and then the rest of the club starts to show up, the first being Santana, who drops down next to Sam, steals the tomato he picks off his sandwich and asks him, “Guess who Mr Schuester gave the _solo_ at Sectionals to?” Then she smirks and says, looking meanly at Rachel, “Let’s think, who’s the most talented? Who doesn’t wear sweaters featuring animals she’ll never know the joy of tasting? Who has the biggest - Sam?” Noticing the look on his face, she pauses to frown, almost concernedly, then looks between he and Kurt and just rolls her eyes, saying around the straw of his slushie. “God, does it ever end with you two?”

They pretend they don’t hear, and when Mercedes appears at Kurt’s other side he’s endlessly thankful to have her distract him with her self-celebratory hug over getting the duet at Sectionals with Quinn.

-

After his last class of the day, Kurt finds Sam leaning on his locker, waiting for him. It’s completely inescapable, especially when he looks up and sees that Kurt’s noticed him there. He doesn’t smile either like he normally does; if anything he looks upset, almost as much as Kurt knows he must look, too.

Kurt is _not_ ready for this.

He stops in front of Sam, squeezing the strap of his bag tightly and trying to look more calm than he feels. Being this distant from him is so strange - but it’s something he should get used to.

“I need to talk to you about something,” Sam tells him, quietly. He looks around them, surrounded by other students loitering in the hallway, and nods his head in the other direction. “Can we go somewhere else?”

Kurt nods hesitatingly. He follows Sam into the empty choir room and joins him when he sits down on the piano bench, feeling nervous this way he’s never had to be around him before.

Neither of them talk for a moment. Kurt waits for Sam, who takes a while to figure out what to say and spends it idly pressing piano keys. Then he takes in a deep breath, stares down at his hands and asks with a strange sounding voice, “Why did you give that girl my number?”

Dread washes over Kurt. There’s nothing, _nothing_ else he’d like to talk about less. And he knows it’s inevitable and it’s what he’d wanted, but it feels too soon to have this talk with Sam where he confirms, once and for all, that he isn’t interested in boys, let alone Kurt. 

“She’s nice,” he answers, his throat feeling painfully dry. He bites down hard on the inside of his cheek before adding, “She’s really beautiful, you know,” and it hurts him, all of it. He forces himself to look at Sam, to smile as much as he can. 

Sam is staring at him, wide-eyed. He looks hurt, or scared - this expression Kurt doesn’t think makes sense right now. “You want me to date her,” he states, softly, and keeps staring at Kurt for an answer.

Then he suddenly asks, “Is this about Blaine?”

Kurt stares at him in shock. “I don’t - what do you mean?” He has no idea, none at all. Blaine texts him occasionally to check in, ask about the bullying, but since Karofsky Sam’s dealt with it well enough for him, and all he and Blaine have had are some weekly messages exchanged during climactic moments in _Revenge_.

With a shrug, Sam looks back down at his hands and stays that way for a while, his whole body looking tense. “Are you dating him?” he asks, so quickly Kurt has to replay it in his mind, and even then he’s still unsure.

“I don’t know what that has to do with any of this.” He means it, but apparently that’s the wrong answer, because Sam looks almost panicked by it.

“Are you?” His eyes are big and pale, and his dry lips are parted, and the look he’s giving Kurt is full of so _much_ , he doesn’t even know how to begin understanding it. “Because you can tell me.”

Kurt frowns at him. “No. We barely even talk.” He feels angry all of a sudden, his chin jutting out and head sharply turning away. “Just because we’re both gay doesn’t mean we can’t just be friends,” he snaps, and he can’t believe he has to explain that to Sam of all people.

“No, I know that, I never thought that,” Sam tells him hastily, shaking his head. “I know. It just seemed like he was...” Sam glances at him. “You know. Into you.”

Most of Kurt’s anger fades, but he doesn’t reply. He knows Blaine doesn’t like him that way in the least. He knows because when (at this point he’s thinking more along the lines of _if_ ) he meets a boy who likes him, it’ll be special. Blaine is nice, but sitting next to him in some out of town cafe and talking in hushed voices about what it’s like to be hated for something unchangeable didn’t feel like it could lead anywhere like that.

Beside him, Sam takes another deep breath.

“I don’t want to date her.”

He spreads his hand out over the keys and presses down on them slowly, one after the other. His mouth is a thin line. “Sorry. I don’t want to date...” He swallows, then pauses and seems to think better, shaking his head. “I’m just not interested.”

He looks at Kurt and swallows again, this time thicker. A funny, nervous smile twitches on his lips, and for a minute Kurt thinks of Sam liking him back, but then he tells himself to be realistic, because having too much hope has never ended well for him.

“You know you said you’d hang out with Rachel this weekend?” Sam asks. “Are we still on for Sunday? The greatest movie marathon ever made and everything.”

Kurt snorts, feeling much, much lighter. “Of course.”

Sam is grinning at him, playfully nudging him with his shoulder, and even if it’s stupid and reckless Kurt just wants to spend just a little while longer liking him without consequences.

-

Rachel shows up at his doorstep on Saturday with her pixelated-cats patterned bag over her shoulder and her giant, excited grin. She throws her arms around Kurt in greeting and says a cheerful hello to his parents and when pushes Finn away when he leans down for a kiss hello upstairs.

“I’m here on friend business only, Finn,” she tells him with her hand up to his face. She looks away from him and speaks like it’s paining her to say the words. “We should avoid any physical contact tonight.”

Mercedes appears soon too, because he doesn’t know how not to invite her everywhere, and they spend most of the night in Kurt’s room talking about all the things he can’t say to Sam or Finn or Puck.

It’s fun, even though he has this insistent urge the entire night to tell them things he can’t, like what he sees when he looks at Sam and how Sam looks back at him sometimes with something in his eyes Kurt just can’t place.

-

Sam comes over in the morning as Rachel and Mercedes are leaving, giggling together and throwing their overnight bags over their shoulders. They both kiss Kurt on the cheek before running outside to Mercedes’s brother’s car, and he waves them off at the front door with Sam at his side, crookedly saluting them as they go.

After Kurt closes the door he turns to Sam and finds him already looking down at him, intently. The he blinks and smiles his dorky half-smile, holding up a plastic bag of DVDs and nudging Kurt with his elbow. “On a scale of one to ten, how psyched are you for this?” He wags his eyebrows and starts awkwardly shrugging off his letterman jacket, getting it stuck in his left elbow and then trying just as awkwardly trying to manoeuvre himself free.

Kurt snorts and reaches out to slide it from his arms. “Oh, _eleven_ , definitely,” he answers, his face blank. It makes Sam smile; Kurt smiles back and mindlessly fidgets with the collar of the letterman jacket hung over his arm. “Start me off easy.” He leads Sam up the stairs. “I’d appreciate the least boring one of the lot.”

He hears Sam shaking the bag behind him, and his smile when he says, “Well, you're lucky none of them are boring, then.”

They aren’t particularly productive today, especially considering they both have tests on Monday that neither of them have gotten around to preparing for - which is a definite first for Kurt and a bad habit for Sam at this point - but Kurt kind of enjoys Sam’s collection of odd films and TV shows, despite himself. There’s something about the inexplicable overuse of blue eyeshadow that makes the original _Star Trek_ episodes appealing to him, and the endearing way Sam finds just about every line in the old _Batman_ series starring Adam West and a plethora of other overzealous actors hilarious beyond belief gives Kurt butterflies in his stomach. 

He likes how nerdy Sam can get around him. He likes how the first time Sam was in his room he sat stiff and quiet on the carpet and now he’s sprawled over Kurt’s bed, laughing breathlessly at the worst television show Kurt has seen in his entire life.

Somewhere between Sam sliding in the next disc and Sam rejoining him on the bed, the atmosphere shifts. His eyes flick to Kurt; it’s dark everywhere except for the TV, but Kurt sees it, Sam’s face all blue from the glare and his gaze strange from so far. When Sam lies next to him again, he’s silent, and the bottom half of his face is buried into Kurt’s throw-pillow.

“The girls kissed you earlier,” he states, simply, which isn’t at all what Kurt was expecting.

He raises an eyebrow and tries not to let his mind wander too far about where this conversation is going, because that’s dangerous - this could be _dangerous_. 

“On the cheek,” he feels is necessary to be said, almost primly. He pretends to look at the television and wonders what Sam’s thinking, what Sam’s expression is right now. “They do that.”

For a moment, Sam is silent. He has his finger hovering over the play button, still, and all Kurt can hear is his breathing - then, just as unexpectedly, “Why?”

Kurt blinks and sits up, abruptly. “They’re my best friends.”

Sam’s expression isn’t really what he thought it’d be. It’s more hard-set, like he knows exactly what he’s saying and how it sounds, which Kurt can’t help but doubt anyway. His green eyes go black in the shade and there’s a visible shine on his lips from where he’s licked them. Kurt’s heart picks up speed just looking at him.

“You’re my best friend. And I'm one of yours... right?” Sam asks, his voice low, and it sounds like entirely too /much/ to be said while they’re alone in the dark together, draped across Kurt’s bed. He looks up at Kurt with his big, questioning eyes, fingers tracing along the pattern of Kurt’s bedspread.

_Dangerous_. Kurt looks away again. “Well, yes, but that’s - it’s different, Sam.” Kurt doesn’t love Rachel or Mercedes the way he loves Sam. It’s suddenly a little terrifying to know that, definitely. That this isn’t like Finn, either: he isn’t savouring little moments in the corridors between classes that don’t amount to anything important, not the way he’d wanted them to be, there’s something much more tangible and _romantic_ between them, no matter how much Kurt tries to ignore it. Sometimes Sam feels like too much for him to have already. Like he should be waiting in a New York airport terminal for him two years from now instead, with his arms outstretched. Like nothing this good could happen to him in Lima, not ever.

Maybe Sam loves him the same way.

“What happened to ‘the greatest movie marathon ever made’?” Kurt asks, interrupting himself. He feels hopelessly sore. 

After a small, heart-hammering moment, Sam smiles at him crookedly, his eyes crinkling at the corners and his cheeks a little overly pink. Kurt feels his heart aching and wonders what Sam’s chapped lips would taste like for the hundredth time, despite himself.

-

Sam leaves a few bad movies later. The end credits of _Predator_ are playing when Kurt finally turns the television off and shifts to lie flat on his back, staring up at his ceiling while Sam answers a text from his mom with careful, considerate slowness. “I guess it’s about time I get going,” he says, quietly, and there’s a pause before his fingers start clicking across the tiny keys of his secondhand cellphone again like he was waiting. But it _is_ time, Kurt thinks, because as nice as he feels being with Sam, it’s also a little intense, a little too weighted to be safe for him right now.

Beside him, Sam slips his phone back into his pocket and flips onto his back, too, an inch or so closer to Kurt than he was before. Kurt looks at him out of the corner of his eye and watches his chest rise and fall in measured breaths - and the way it catches, once, enough for Kurt to hear his trembling exhale.

“This was fun,” Sam tells him after a moment, like he knows he’s been caught, and this is an offer of consolation, like he needs that. And he sort of does.

But Kurt’s good at shaking these things off now. He smiles wryly, one of his arms thoughtlessly stretching out above them in the air. “Corny, trashy, C-list fun,” he agrees. Then he sighs and drops his arm back to his side, still staring hard up at the ceiling and trying to ignore the itch to turn to Sam and look at him - _look_ that way he knows he really shouldn’t. Clearing his throat, he adds, “I’m going to have to watch like, a hundred boring Oscar winning movies to make up to my brain for that now, you know.”

“Bet you’re wishing _Avatar_ had won now,” Sam says with a smile in his voice, playfully nudging his arm.

“Oh, yes. ‘Wishing’ - not internally crying with thankfulness and joy.”

Sam nudges him again, this time slightly harder. Kurt turns to him and they grin at each other and it feels like Kurt’s falling in love with him again every time they’re together now. It’s too much, he thinks, but at the same time the feeling is wonderful and precious to him in a way nothing else ever has been.

They lie together for a few more minutes in silence. The room is dark without the television light and the night from outside is gradually creeping deeper inside. As much as Kurt needs Sam to go he kind of needs him to stay, too, but then Sam makes it easy for him by sitting up and clapping his hands together with finality.

“I have to go,” he repeats, as though he just remembered. He sits on the side of the bed and slips his shoes back on. He takes all his bad DVDs and puts them back in his bag, then he stands at the door, tapping absent-mindedly on his thighs as he smiles and waits on Kurt, like always.

Kurt hauls himself up and follows him down the stairs to the front door, ignoring the curious eyebrow-raise Finn gives them on the way to his room. When he hears Finn’s door shutting over, he doesn’t relax - he feels guilty for how he looks at Sam and how he can't help feeling around him. It’s not Finn’s doing, but the way he looks at Kurt and _knows_ \- knows _so_ well - it makes everything feel even worse.

A hand grasps his arm and knocks him back out of his thoughts. Sam is smiling down at him with an eyebrow raised in concern. He squeezes Kurt’s arm. “You alright, dude?”

Shaking his head, Kurt dismissively waves a hand in front of him, waves it off. “Oh, it’s nothing,” he replies, sounding convincingly unaffected. “I’m just still shaken up about the thought of watching _Avatar_ for a second time.”

Sam stares at him and doesn’t move his hand away, not even after Kurt wills it to be gone with Jedi mind-force (and then realises _God_ , he and Sam need to hang out less). “You’ve only seen it _once_? Shit, Kurt, we need to fix that one day. We’re going to watch it back-to-back for like 20 hours or something.”

Kurt scrunches his nose up in distaste. “If I remember correctly, that's only enough time to watch it once.”

Another hand curls around Kurt’s other arm and they both squeeze him, tightly. Sam is giving him an abruptly serious look. “I _will_ make you love it,” he pledges. Then he pulls Kurt a stumbling step closer to him and leans in the rest of the way to firmly press a kiss against his cheek. 

(Kurt stills and wonders if he actually has Jedi mind-powers, because he secretly wished for them to do that.)

The front door opens, and Kurt realises Sam has let him go, that he's standing in the doorway now and giving him a parting smile over his shoulder and saying, “I’ll see you later, okay?” like it never even happened.

Dumbly, Kurt nods. By then, Sam’s already left, and he’s heard his car start up outside and drive all the way out of hearing distance, and he isn’t actually capable of anything more than an inch of vertical head movement because Sam kind of kissed him, and it feels kind of awesome.

-

They rehearse for Sectionals and Kurt knows Sam puts in half the effort he normally would (although it’s impossible for anyone else to tell, really) because Mr Schuester turned them down for the duet again. Kurt, who knows Mr Schue better, didn’t expect anything else from him.

“He hasn’t even heard us,” Sam mutters to him, doing some half-hearted bumbling that could be mistaken for the choreography. 

Kurt makes a small noncommittal sound and pretends he can’t see both Rachel and Puck side-eyeing the two of them intently. Even Santana is looking at them periodically, although her face is filled less with concern and more with her sleazy smile, complete with lewd eyebrow wagging. _God_ , their friends suck.

Almost forgetting to even feign dancing, Sam turns to him, frowning. “Doesn’t it piss you off? He wouldn’t even listen to us, Kurt.”

It’s different, but he knows Sam won’t understand why, because Sam’s inherently a good person and the teachers in Mckinley are questionable at best. He glances at the front of the class, where Mr Schue is trying two-handed to position one of Finn’s legs correctly, and decides it’s safe enough. “I think he thinks maybe us singing together is a bad idea,” Kurt states, almost placatingly, and he knows he’s not wrong. “With all the bullying this year.” 

It’s giving Mr Schue too much credit, acting like it isn’t _mostly_ because he doesn’t know what the judges will think about a two-boy duet. And Kurt hates that, of course, but what he hates more is giving the jocks more ammunition than they’re already got - and not just to attack him with.

Sam looks at him consideringly. Kurt knows he’s being figured out, Kurt knows Sam knows Mr Schue’s real reasons. He’s not stupid.

“None of that’ll ever happen to you again,” he murmurs, leaning closer. His eyes are half-covered by his yellow bangs, but Kurt can see the sincerity in them, and he feels it more than he should when Sam reassuringly, lightly touches his arm. And Sam is frowning at him when he tells him, seriously, “I won’t let it. So don’t worry about that stuff anymore, okay?”

He steps back again, glancing cautiously at the front and then looking back at Kurt for a response, and Kurt’s throat does that thing it does sometimes when Sam surprises him - closes up around all the words and dries them all up, away.

All he can do is swallow and nod, trying to smile. His face must be red, he knows, and he turns so maybe Sam won’t notice it, trying to think about Sectionals and what Rachel has repeatedly told him are _extremely_ important numbers, even if she isn’t leading them.

Mr Schue claps his hands together at the front, asking them to draw their attention to Finn, who’s smiling happily and showing that he can nearly, almost, sort of do a pretty standard move. 

Beside him, Sam mumbles, “We should have gotten a _chance_.”

-

Sectionals is fun.

Competitions always are, but this is the first one where Sam sits next to him on the bus-ride over and makes up a game of staring forward and catching the other looking at them (a game Kurt normally played with him in secret already) and where he and Puck sit together while Mr Schue signs them in and judge the girls’ dresses in the other club (Puck even gestures to the Warblers and says, “We can talk about - _that_ , too, y’know. If you want to have some bulge-conversation or whatever.”) and it’s the first one where Rachel drags him into the empty girls’ bathroom to do vocal warming up exercises, a lot of which are fun in a crazy-Rachel way and a lot of which are mildly terrifying in a crazy-Rachel way, too. 

It’s the first competition where Kurt has a friend from an opposing school, too.

“Hey there,” Blaine greets backstage, smiling and looking completely the same as the last time Kurt saw him. 

Looking at him, Kurt doesn’t think he could’ve handled Dalton for long. The idea of a set uniform, identical to every other person around him every day scares him a little, strangely. It’s not for him, really, though Blaine always seems happy enough.

He takes his hands out of his grey pockets and sits down next to Kurt on the set of stairs he felt sick on last year. This time he’s much less uneasy, but feeling the same discontent as Sam about the duet situation all of a sudden. He still smiles at Blaine when he bumps their knees together and gives him a, “Hey.”

“Think you guys are ready for us?” Blaine grins at him, nudges him again. 

Kurt jokingly rolls his eyes.“ _Please_ , I know we are. You’re leaving here disappointed.” He’s never really certain at these things though, probably because New Directions only seems to rehearse their numbers a handful of weeks in advance while he knows the other teams prepare for months. They’re lucky, though.

Blaine laughs and leans back, propped up a few steps above them on his elbows. “We’re pretty good, you know. Even if the other teams have spied on our setlists.”

Smiling, Kurt says nothing and absentmindedly fidgets a little with his shirt collar, instead. When he turns to Blaine, he sees his eyes are following the movement of his fingertips above the skin of his neck and blinks at him.

Blaine’s eyes flick back up to meet his, then he shifts closer on the step and looks around them before regarding Kurt fully again. “How is... everything going?” he asks, lowly, eyebrows scrunching up. “At school. Has it let up?”

And so far - it _has_. Kurt knows Blaine wants him to talk to Karofsky, maybe, tell the school or something but he doesn’t know how to deal with it, at least not right now. He’s given Karofsky space, and thankfully Karofsky’s returned the favour, and every other jock doesn’t want Sam or Finn or Puck after them, or, worst of all, his famously terrifying dad.

“Yeah,” Kurt answers, and he feels himself smiling big and surprising himself with it. “School is good right now. Really good. And I don’t think any of that will happen again.” He hopes not, anyway, or he doubts that Karofsky would try anything else at least.

“That’s great, Kurt,” Blaine tells him, sounding genuine. He reaches out and puts his hand on Kurt’s knee, still wearing his pleased smile, and then looks down at his own hand in surprise. He gives Kurt a look he never has before, and Kurt feels nervous and uneasy that way only boys can make him feel. Then Blaine opens his mouth to speak but only gets to say, “You -” before he’s interrupted.

It’s Santana, who stands in front of them with crossed arms and asks Blaine, sharply, “Shouldn’t you be getting ready to go onstage with the rest of the Dalton Swallowers? You guys are up in a minute.”

Blaine looks up at her, mouth still parted, and then nods with his eyebrows drawn in suspicion. “You’re right.” He stands up, brushing off his slacks and briefly turning to Kurt again with a parting smile. “I’ll see you around, Kurt. Wish me luck.”

On his way past Santana gives him a fakely sweet smile and an outdrawn, “Good _luck_.” Then she looks at his retreating back, rolls her eyes, groans out loudly in disgust and drops next to Kurt on the step, a little too close for comfort. 

"Are you into that kid?” she asks, outright. “Like, is _that_ your type? Or is he trying to get you to join some kind of skeevy, Kool-Aid drinking cult or something? He has that overly nice Scientologist vibe going for him.” She makes an overly-nice-Scientologist gesture in the air with a vague hand wave.

Kurt stares at her, expression turning hard. “No, okay? Why does nobody get that I can be friends with other gay guys? _Platonically_?”

After a brief moment of looking half-surprised and half-impressed by the outburst, Santana rolls her eyes again. “So, what you got from that little meet-and-greet with Blair -”

“ _Blaine_.”

“God, _whatever_. You didn’t see him feeling you up with his eyes?” Her eyebrows lower, and then she squints at Kurt, pulling back from him a little to give him a proper look of confusion. “Do you really never notice guys doing that to you? I thought that was just a little Sam-and-Kurt game or something queer like that.”

Kurt sighs in frustration and stands up. He can hear the Warblers, distantly, and doubts he’ll get to see them perform now like he’d planned to. “What does Sam have to do with this?” he asks, crossing his arms.

They look at each other for a moment, and Kurt’s kind of unnerved by the way she looks like she’s trying to figure him out. Then she stands, too, quickly running her hands down the front of her dress before stepping in front of him and looking up into his face with an almost-frown. 

She pretends to find something interesting on her fingernails when she speaks to him. “Look, I get that you and Sam are going through - _stuff_.” She even makes air-quotes around the word. “It’s awkward and cringey enough just watching so I can’t imagine how hideously embarrassed you guys feel over it.” Her eyes flick briefly to him then away again. “But Sam’s going through something bigger than your tragic teenage gay romance right now. _Big_ ,” she says, lowly, and then she looks at him head-on. Something in her eyes looks scared.

Turning her gaze to the floor, she finishes, almost inaudibly, “It’s hard enough to deal with one crisis at a time, let alone a big flaming gay one and a sappy, disgusting _love_ one at the same time.” She clutches her elbow. “And it hurts to see someone else there instead of...” Her head snaps up again, abruptly, lips pressing together before she finishes with a newly-steadied voice, “Instead of him. Hurts Sam, I mean.”

Applause sounds from the stage, and they both turn towards it, Kurt feeling at a loss for anything to say. Santana is completely back to normal when he looks at her, giving him a smirk that only wavers slightly and sliding her fingers around his wrist. “You ready?”

He answers with a hesitating nod, and she pulls him into a run towards the stage.

-

During the performance Kurt notices two things.

The first is Santana - who’s performance in _Valerie_ is admittedly amazing, although he’d never inflate her ego by telling her so - and the way she lights up all over, grinning around the lyrics on her tongue whenever Brittany dances next to her and when Brittany throws her arms around her when their performance is over.

The second is Sam, who waits nervously for him before getting onstage with the others and looks down at him almost with sadness until Kurt fixes his collar and says, “Regionals is ours, okay?” and then he’s bright, smiling, laughing, kissing Kurt’s cheek and giving him this look all throughout their performance that’s enough to make him stumble over his footing, but not enough to make them lose joint first place.

-

As it gets closer to Christmas, Rachel and Finn have more and more relationship drama, which Kurt really _hates_ lately, because he couldn't be more in the middle of it. But he still sits with Finn most days in his gross, perpetually pizza-and-foot scented room and plays _Left 4 Dead_ with him for hours on end to keep him from feeling sad and alone, like he knows he does sometimes; and Rachel does, too, so he calls her at night, takes her out on weekends, tells her she's beautiful when she needs to hear it. It still sucks.

When it becomes too much and way too depressing for him alone to handle, Puck takes over for Finn and Mercedes sets up temporary camp in Rachel's bedroom. Sam and Santana take him out for Breadstix to relax, which is surprisingly inoffensive for the most part and kind of fun, even.

“ _Finchel drama_ ,” Santana sneers from the opposite side of their booth, breaking the breadstick in her hands sharply into two. “My question is, when will it finally just _die_? I feel like it’s going to be like that stupid movie you made me watch and I’ll have to dress up like a gay old wizard and slay them like a beast.”

At her side, Sam plays with his straw and mumbles, “Why do you always call my movies stupid?”

Kurt gives him a sympathetic smile, then sighs. “I’m all out of Finn-and-Rachel conversation. I hit my limit around Jessie St. Asshole,” he says with an obligatory shudder. Then he straightens. “Let’s talk about _anything_ else.”

“Even the new _Zelda_?” Sam pipes up, jokingly hopeful. 

Santana jabs his cheek with one half on her breadstick and he laughs, waving her off.

“I just can’t wait for school to finish up for Christmas so I can be done with everyone else’s shit in my face all day,” she groans. After a moment of looking around the restaurant with narrowing eyes, she asks the table, loudly enough for everyone else to hear, “Are we _ever_ getting served? God, it’s like you people want to get sued.”

He’s the one who drives Sam home, since Santana claims she has plans then walks off to her car, waving without looking back at them and saying with an infuriating smirk in her voice, “You’re welcome.”

It’s cold and snowing a little, so when Kurt turns to Sam to find him smiling back at his with pink cheeks and white flakes of snow in his hair he thinks the whole heart skipping a beat thing is justifiable for once. He holds his keys up, jangling them almost in a question and Sam just grins in response, leading the way to the Navigator.

Kurt still has Rachel’s ‘ _Chrismukkah 2011!!_ ’ playlist on in the car which would be a thousand times more embarrassing if Sam didn’t turn to him when it started playing to ask, “What, did she make everyone a copy of this?”

“It’s _Rachel_ ,” Kurt explains, shooting him a wry smile.

“I know, but sometimes she’s just... so, _so_ Rachel.”

The drive is a little on the quiet side since Kurt’s on-edge driving in snow and ice and Sam knows it. Mostly there’s just the sounds of _Pink Martini_ ’s most festive classics, complete with some humming on both their parts and Sam’s fingers tapping along the dashboard, almost anxiously. Then his hand stills, and his voice fades off.

“There’s something I need to talk to you about,” he says abruptly.

Kurt glances at him in the mirror, making an effort to look as unperturbed by the statement as possible. “Oh?” he says, giving Sam’s arm a light nudge with his elbow. He grasps the steering wheel with both hands unintentionally making tight, scared fists. Hopefully whatever he’s got to say isn’t crash-into-a-ditch worthy. “I’m all ears.”

Quiet falls over them again. He gives Sam some curious, unseen looks, but Sam’s just staring out the window with his bottom lip disappeared into his mouth.

“I suck at talking about myself,” is all he says, his voice quiet and apologetic. He doesn’t take his eyes off the glass, even when the snow covers the half he’s looking through completely.

Kurt feels strangely sick. It takes him a moment to be able to speak again, after swallowing the dryness and nerves away and taking some silent, calming breaths. “It’s fine.” Then after a pause, he adds, “But you can tell me anything, Sam,” and he means it, even if it’s something he’ll hate to hear.

He can feel Sam’s eyes on his the rest of the drive, the weight of them almost insisting that he look back, but he feels too uneasy to to anything but drive. When he pulls up at the house, he takes an extra moment to stare ahead before facing Sam with a broad, unconvincing smile.

“Drive safe, okay?” Sam tells him with complete seriousness. He undoes his seatbelt and leans over to quickly press his lips to Kurt’s cheek, then pulls away with his crooked smile and opens his door, stepping out into the cold outside.

Kurt stays parked there, sat there for a moment too long, and when he gets home he throws himself into whatever Rachel-provoked drama that has Finn watching _The Best of Barbra Streisand Collection_ so his mind doesn’t linger on _there’s something I need to talk to you about_.

-

He thinks about it all night, anyway. He thinks about it all week: in History when Sam has his tongue stuck out his mouth while he doodles nonsensical things with nonsensical words around them in Kurt’s jotter; in glee club when they decorate their ugly Christmas tree and get to sing with each other for a brief, lovely moment; at home when he’s sitting on the couch doing things unrelated to Sam or boys or anything _messy_ at all.

-

Sam’s late to lunch on Thursday, and Kurt waits a whole half an hour of pretending it doesn’t bother him to their friends and pretending he can’t feel Santana and Puck kicking at his legs beneath the table or the weight of the looks he knows Rachel is giving him. That’s as long as he can wait, though.

He wordlessly pushes the remainders of his lunch over to Finn, who gives him a thumbs up and an unpleasant view of the sandwich in his mouth when he smiles, then gets up from the table and ignores Artie catcalling and his friends making big deals out of really not-big stuff.

Not-big like finding Sam still sitting on a locker-room bench, wet-haired and so completely unmoving Kurt has to wonder how long he’s been in that position. He’s just staring into space, no expression on his face at all.

“Sam?” Kurt calls out softly, hesitantly knocking on the door.

It takes a second for Sam to notice him. He blinks, big-eyed, then swallows loudly enough for Kurt to hear him across the room. “Hey, I’m just -”

He fumbles with his hands, staring down at them. He isn’t doing anything.

Kurt’s kind of terrified by it.

He takes a few tentative steps inside, and sits down a little away from Sam on the bench when he doesn’t protest it. He even works up the nerve to put his hand on Sam’s tensed back, very lightly. But he doesn’t say anything, because he doesn’t have the first idea what Sam wants to hear right now at all.

They just sit there for a while, silent and still and Kurt wonders if Sam can hear the way his heart is pounding and _pounding_ all through it.

“I think I’m gay,” Sam tells him, very quietly.

They still don’t move. Kurt thinks he’s frozen in place, and hopes Sam doesn’t turn to see him staring back at him with stupidly big eyes. Sam is gay - Sam is _gay_. Part of Kurt can comprehend but another part is so used to repeating the very opposite it can’t stop, even now.

Kurt lets out a rush of breath. “ _Wow_ ,” he huffs out. His hand drops from Sam’s back down to his side again, limp. “That’s...”

“I know it’s fine. I’ve seen just about every apocalypse movie ever and I’ve never seen one where someone says they’re gay and the world just ends on the spot.” He exhales shakily and flexes his fingers in front of him. “But it’s hard, you know?” He turns to Kurt, and his eyes are red and wet and he looks so, so scared that Kurt can’t help reaching an arm around his shoulders, protectively. 

Sam leans into his touch and makes fists in his lap.

“It is,” Kurt agrees, nodding. “It sucks and it’s hard and scary but you have us, and your parents, and _my_ parents, even, and - you have me.” He smiles and squeezes Sam’s shoulder slightly. “I’m pretty well equipped for this. Probably.”

They’re too close together, so close that when Sam turns to face him the tips of their noses touch and sirens go off in Kurt’s head, reflexively. Sam gives him a small smile, and that’s enough, Kurt thinks, then he stands up and offers out a hand.

“You need to eat something,” he states.

Sam snorts, rubbing his hands on his jeans and then slipping one warmly into Kurt’s, then he simply sits there, holding it for a moment. Kurt’s glad to know that stuff like this feels just as anxiety inducing as before.

He stands, slowly, giving Kurt’s hand a squeeze and widening his smile. Then he pulls Kurt into an abrupt, firm hug where Kurt can feel his chest trembling against his own. “Thanks,” Sam murmurs in his ear, and then he pulls back grinning and yanks Kurt into a run to the cafeteria by the hand. 

Kurt’s madly, stupidly, ridiculously in love with him.

-

They see more and more of each other over the holidays.

From what Kurt knows he and Santana are the only people who know, and the only people who’re going to know for a while. Sam can take as long as he needs, Kurt thinks, and it’s selfish, maybe, because a silly part of him loves that Sam feels safest with him, when they’re alone together.

They babysit the kids when Sam’s parents have date night and complete _Kirby’s Epic Yarn_ on the Wii and they watch this entire weird anime thing on Sam’s laptop based in a world where pink is a natural hair colour (when he first notices Kurt makes a face and points to it on the screen, saying, “Nobody would question your dye-job in this world”) and it’s all the same as it was before and completely different at the same time.

Like Kurt’s 99% sure Sam smells his hair when they hug now but Rachel’s given him many awkward talks about wanting something so much you start _projecting_ \- and Kurt really, really wants Sam.

They see each other less the closer Christmas comes, but Kurt makes sure to give Sam his present before they stop seeing each other altogether, and Sam takes it hesitantly, offering his own back.

“Nothing big?” he asks when he’s holding his present, as if to make sure. That’s what they’d agreed on, and Kurt made sure that’s what he did.

He nods. “Nothing big.”

Sam sends him a photo the day after Christmas of the bottle of darker-blond dye Kurt got him, along with a message that says, _hope its more my colour_. Kurt sends one back of the _Avatar_ DVD case, still wrapped in its plastic that says, _I’ll wait on you to try mine_.

-

“You’re going to Sam’s _again_?” Finn asks on New Years day. He’s lounged over the couch, in the same spot he was in the afternoon, blearily blinking up at Kurt.

Kurt quickly buttons up his coat and examines himself in the living room mirror. “We’re babysitting.”

Sitting up, Finn snorts and gives him a look. “Dude, I know what that means,” he says, rubbing a hand over his face. “If you guys are like - you know - I don’t get why you won’t just tell me.”

“Maybe because you refer to it as ‘ _you know_ ’.” Kurt carefully adjusts the angle of his hair, then gives Finn an obviously fake smile. “But there’s nothing to tell, anyway, so.” He gets to the door and waves at Finn without turning back to him, stepping outside and calling out, “Please don’t burn our house down, my dad will kill you and then I’ll have to live with all the combined trauma.”

“I might do it just for that,” is Finn’s goodbye.

Kurt frets around the car most of the drive and almost knocks into an old lady driving too slow who flips him off out of her window. After the shock of it wears off he absent-mindedly wonders if it was Puck’s grandmother, and then he’s already stopping in front of Sam’s house and looking at the Evans’s snow covered lawn. Sam’s parents are already outside, on their way to their own car, and give him enthusiastic, Sam-like waves when they spot him, wearing their familiarly crinkled smiles.

“Have fun!” Mary calls to him when he steps out of his car.

“Be careful!” Dwight calls when they’re getting into their own.

He waves as they back out of the drive, shivering slightly, and finds Sam waiting for him in the doorway, holding the door open for him to come inside. A welcomed wall of heat hits him one step into the house, and he shrugs his snow-damp coat off quickly to get the best of it.

Holding himself tightly, he simply mutters out, “Cold,” and becomes annoyingly aware of how red the chill has made his nose and cheeks.

Sam grins down at him and rubs his hands up and down Kurt’s arms. “Winter,” he corrects lowly, leaning in too close to Kurt’s face.

Kurt can feel the warmth of his breath tickling over his skin and it’s already too much. He even still has his big, hot hands around Kurt’s arms. “What’s the plan for tonight?” he asks, unable to help the way his voice instinctively follows Sam down a pitch to that pitch where everything sounds throaty and sexual and _too much_.

“The kids want to order pizza watch _Toy Story_.”

“Which one?”

Sam’s mouth twitches. “All three.” He leans in even closer, and for a moment Kurt thinks they’re going to bump foreheads but Sam just half-smiles at him and says, “You can stay late, right?” then pulls him backwards by the arms into the living room, where Stevie and Stacey are sitting on the couch, ready with their microwaved popcorn and fighting over who sits next to him.

-

_Toy Story 3_ is long, and the kids barely manage to stay awake through half of it - which Kurt is thankful for, because he really doesn’t want two below-ten-year-olds and the guy he likes to witness him crying. Once they’ve carried them up to their room, Sam takes him across the hall into his and drops down on the bed, heavily.

“Man, I’m really glad we got to turn that movie off before I could start hardcore sobbing. The kids made fun of me when we saw it at the movies, you know.”

Grinning, Kurt lies down next to him, a respectable distance away. “They’re too young. They don’t understand the pain.”

Sam snorts and shifts on the bed to turn onto his side, facing Kurt and - he’s giving Kurt this _look_ , smiling with the corner of his bottom lip stuck between his teeth like he’s excited, or just as strangely nervous as Kurt is lately.

And Kurt's heart is pounding. It feels like it's reaching out of his chest and then slamming back inside and it's _so_ distracting, and makes him feel just a little sick - the good, dizzy kind. 

It's all Sam's fault for looking at him this way. Big, lazy, lopsided smile. Big, intent green eyes. Half his face is pressed into his Pac-Man bedsheets, and his too-long, too-yellow bangs are strewn across his face, and he's so _close_ now, and Kurt knows what's going to happen. 

He's still, almost shocked at the realisation that they're here, that they _are_ , finally. Sam's fingertips touch his cheek, soft and warm, and then the bed shifts and squeaks underneath them and Sam's leaning in, eyes closed and mouth parting and parting. And - parting.

Kurt has to move out of the way and hide into the crook of Sam's neck, laughing hard, the tension in him effectively diffused. His stomach hurts, and Sam is blinking down at him with a curious smile on his face.

"What?" he presses, nudging at Kurt's hip slightly. "That was the big moment, man."

Kurt pulls back, a hand over his stretched lips."Sorry, it's just - your mouth was really wide open. Flashes of _Jaws_ , open." He bites his bottom lip and tries not to laugh and ruin it completely. He clears his throat, looking up into Sam's face. "I wasn't expecting it, is all. And I'm sure I'd still have liked it."

"Oh my God," Sam says, laughing a little breathlessly. He runs a still slightly shaky hand through his hair. "I'm sorry, I was just planning to really go for it. I guess I got kind of carried away."

He looks at Kurt for a moment with his lips pressed together, considering. With one of his hands he traces absentminded patterns over the skin of Kurt's arm, and Kurt gets that sickly, pleasant feeling again. 

Sam bites his lip, softly murmuring, "Is it totally dead now? Or can I try again without almost swallowing your whole head?"

Taking a fistful of Sam's shirt into his hand, Kurt grins tells him, "Yeah, that would be..." then he decides he's done waiting and pushes himself up on the mattress to press his smiling lips firmly against Sam's, the bend of his arm cradling Sam's head.

The hands on him hastily reach up into his hair, gently knotting, and pull him lower until Kurt has to move on top of him, straddling his waist. Sam's lips part again, this time only a cautious fraction, and Kurt licks just as cautiously inside, the feeling inside of him quickly turning hot and spreading all over, so every stroke of Sam's thumb against the back of his neck gives him chills.

It's soft and inexperienced and it makes Kurt feel like his heart could burst when Sam mumbles his name against his lips, sounding pleased and content, his voice low with something that Kurt knows turns his own skin red.

He has to pull away, breathless, heart pounding and pounding still. Sam follows his lips, breathing just as hard, and Kurt kisses him again, chastely, before dropping onto his side on the bed, feeling strangely, comfortably accomplished.

He feels Sam's hand out at his side, feels it scrambling for his own and catches it tightly. Sam squeezes around his fingers then turns to give him a smile Kurt never gets tired of seeing, his big, intent green eyes looking shiny with tears.

-

The next time they see each other is school, where Kurt can’t do even a quarter of one of the things he wants to do with Sam. It’s a new year, and apparently people still care about football, which is why the rest of the boys are barely ever anywhere else in Mckinley except on the field anymore.

“Coach Beiste is the child-catcher,” Brittany announces monotonously over the lunch table. “I knew it. They look exactly alike.”

Santana gives her a fond, head-tilted smile and Kurt exchanges a fiveway look of concern with Mercedes, Tina, Quinn and Rachel.

“Exactly?” Quinn asks with a cocked eyebrow. She gets an immediate glare from Santana in response.

“It’s Mckinley,” Mercedes says, “it’s not like we’re actually going to _win_.”

Tina shakes her head. “It’s ridiculous. Mike hasn’t ate lunch all week because ‘ _the game_.’” She rolls her eyes. “And none of them make it to rehearsals anymore.”

They don’t, which is why it’s such a surprise when they step into the choir room that afternoon to find the entire football team sitting inside, and Coach Beiste next to Mr Schuester in the center of the room, both of them smiling almost with _pride_ , like they’ve done something good here.

Kurt catches Karofsky’s eye and looks away instantaneously, reaching out for Mercedes’s arm.

“You _cannot_ be serious,” Rachel angrily bursts out. She jabs a finger in the direction of the football players newly joining the club, congregated on the opposite side of the room from the others, who all sit, arms crossed and jaws clenched on the other side. “You know what these boys have done to us, Mr Schue.”

Lauren enters behind them, stopping dead in the doorway at the sight. “Wrong. It’s so wrong.”

“Why are they here?” Kurt snaps, heart hammering in his chest. Glee is his one safe place, and trust Mr Schuester to lead every jock who’s made it their personal duty to torment him since the fifth grade straight into it.

Mr Schuester acts appalled by what they’re saying, defensively putting his hands up while Coach Bieste simply crosses her arms at his side, giving half of her team a hard look. 

“Woah, guys. I know how hard the football team has made things for us in the past, but the reason we’re all together right now is to change that. Everyone deserves a second chance, right?”

“ _No_ , not when you’re a heap of shit like _that_ heap of shit over there,” Puck counters, gesturing with his thumb at the crowd of football players sitting a deliberate three chairs worth of space from him. They all look offended in reply, not knowing who exactly the biggest heap of shit is, but Kurt does, and Puck stares straight at him after with a hard, concerned look in his eyes.

Coach Beiste points at him. “Like it or not, this is the situation for now, _at least_ until the game. You’re all going to work hard together on this half-time show, got that?”

-

“I’m so sorry,” is the first thing Sam says to him afterwards. The whole club, now consisting of twenty more burly football players than before, has been moved to the auditorium, where they’re working on zombie make-up and walks. Kurt is trying to fix a smudge Sam made across his cheek.

He gives Sam a brief look, carefully spreading the grey paint across his skin, then just says, “You did a good job of this on your own, you know.”

“You too. Yours is awesome.” A pause. “I’m sorry.”

Sighing, Kurt drops the pad of paint down on the tabletop beside them, gesturing his head at the mirror attached for Sam to examine himself. He feels a lot less like making out right now. “None of this is your fault. It’s okay.”

Sam shakes his head. He licks across his thumb, reaching up to rub it across a small section of skin on Kurt’s neck, gently, talking as he does it and Kurt is kind of shocked but very unopposed. “It’s really isn’t. I should have pulled Mr Schuester aside and said something or just - I don’t know, punched Karofsky’s lights out a few months ago.” 

The tip of his thumb comes away black when he moves his hand back again.

“As if Mr Schue would ever listen to logic,” Kurt answers, almost breathlessly. He stares down at Sam, who stares back up at him, and feels the phantom, hot touch of his fingers trailing across his skin again. Of his warm, slick mouth.

Sam reaches out again, hesitantly, and rubs at the same spot, bright-eyes staring deep into Kurt’s. His touch spreads heat across his skin, a burning, delicious sensation travelling throughout him that settles low in his stomach. He bites his lip to keep from making a sound, and Sam’s eyes fix on where his teeth have caught in the skin, looking fascinated.

They aren’t alone, Kurt remembers abruptly. 

Sam’s hand pulls away from him, then he looks around to see if they’ve been caught and his eyes stick to something, widening with panic before he turns away, red-faced, to look away from his own reflection in the mirror.

Kurt turns and sees the boy Sam’s eyes landed on, still watching them, mouth hanging open slightly. His brow furrows when he looks at Kurt, zombie make-up shifting into something Kurt finds genuinely frightening, then he says something to the jock next to him, something Kurt’s mind convinces him starts with _Evans is a goddamn -_

He looks away, fearfully, but can’t let his eyes fall back to Sam. Rachel calls on him from the other side of the room, claiming face-paint emergency, and he’s glad for the distraction from the way Sam looked down at his two feet after touching him, bright red with shame.

-

Sam stays away from him for a while.

It’s strange and worrying and Kurt hates every minute of it, but more than anything he hates that it feels like Sam wants his flimsy jock reputation more than he wants to be honest. 

More than he wants to be with Kurt.

Football practice gets so intense and frequent that nobody notices, and in glee, Kurt opts to stick by the girls (and Puck, who declares himself an honorary girl so he can be with Lauren who promptly reminds him she isn’t a _lesbian_ , Puckerman) which is safe enough. They don’t talk about it, and they end up getting individually pulled up by football players for help with zombie walking, zombie make-up, and singing.

There’s one point in the chaos of glee practice where Kurt nudges the case of face-paints he’s done with over to a bare-faced Karofsky without looking at him and with the same dread as months ago, and even gets a soft, “Thanks,” in return.

Mostly, Kurt feels kind of alone with everybody so wrapped up in themselves, and their relationship drama, and their ‘Coach Sylvester is going to fire us out of cannons’ drama. He misses Sam in a way that’s worse now than ever, because now there’s more to miss, and it hurts Kurt’s heart more than any boy ever has, because this one could have been his - wanted to be, and then thought better, of course.

-

In the first history class Sam hasn’t got pulled out of for football in _weeks_ , he sits down next to Kurt, as usual, and clears his throat.

“After the game on Friday I’m having a party at my house,” he starts, hunching over a blank page like he has something to write while giving Kurt a glance. “My parents are taking the kids over to Kentucky to see some of our relatives, so it’s empty.”

Kurt pauses while taking his things out of his bag. Throwing parties while his parents are gone doesn’t sound like an idea Sam would come up with.

His knee nudges Kurt’s under the table, and Kurt gets that sickly feeling again just from the small touch. “I really want you to come,” Sam tells him, and he’s smiling, a little smaller than normally but just as sincere.

Kurt smiles back. He nudges Sam back and everything, even replies with a playful, “ _Maybe_ ,” like everything’s okay between them, but he knows he isn’t going, and that no amount of wishing on Sam’s part is going to make his jock world and his almost-but-not-boyfriend fit together in any way.

-

On Friday night, Kurt ends up on the football pitch again for the second time in his life.

“Those pants look great on you,” Mercedes whispers before the game when they’re all standing in position and she’s behind him, able to give his ass an appreciative look.

“Thank you,” Kurt whispers back. Then, “I don’t know how to play football.”

They’re kind of bad, but he’s never really watched football and thinks, considering the situation, they’re doing okay. Rachel and Puck yelled encouragement at each other pre-game, and it’s rubbed off on him, too, so he runs and pretends like he has some small idea what to do until Tina gets hit and effectively terrifies everyone by seeming dead, at which point he’s appropriately scarred for life in regards to sports and opts to do nothing in safety until half-time, instead.

When it finally comes Puck yells at the football team into performing with them, which surprisingly works, and then there’s the whole mess of getting ready in the space of five minutes, meeting zombie Santana, Brittany and Quinn out on the field and performing this crazy, eery mash-up Kurt suddenly isn’t sure anyone will like, because that’s just New Directions’s luck.

But the crowd ends up loving them, and Kurt can see his dad looking confused in the stands next to Carole, who grins and waves enthusiastically, mouthing ‘wow’ at him when they’re finished, and Kurt is so exhausted from five minutes of football playing and thriller-ing combined that he ends up next to them a few moments later.

He’s filled with relief that the actual team are _there_ for the second-half, and when they win, he watches Sam in the middle of it all, pulling his helmet off and grinning, briefly and curiously glancing up into the stands for someone before turning back, facing away from him.

-

Finn texts him just after midnight asking for a ride home from Sam’s party.

Kurt wastes ten minutes huffing to himself and another twenty deciding on the right outfit before he replies, ignoring Finn’s other four messages composed only of confused capital letters and question marks. _On my way_ , is all he sends, because if normal Finn struggles to find any tone in Kurt’s messages he doubts wasted Finn will fare any better.

The car is silent while he drives. He’s too frustrated for music – frustrated about Finn, about Sam, about everybody at Mckinley. He slows the car about a mile from Sam’s house, as though the tiny delay will offend any of Finn’s intoxicated senses. It’s the smallest satisfaction, the only one he can really get when he parks into the crowded sidewalk of Sam’s house, heart suddenly beating in thick staccato, like warning shots firing hard against his ribs.

He takes a deep breath before he steps out and surveys the picture-perfect image of what highschool parties looked like in his head. Footballers and cheerios, nameless but pretty faces aimlessly drifting around Sam’s garden that thankfully pay him no attention. People like this don’t make Kurt feel comfortable. They don’t make him feel _safe_.

He wipes his shoes on the Evans’ welcome mat – an old habit – before letting himself inside, where it only gets more cliché highschool: thumping music from an iPod dock, every room crowded by drunken strangers Kurt doubts Sam’s ever spoke to. He looks around for Finn, asks a swaying Mike for him when they cross paths, but Mike tells him with his toxic vodka breath that Finn already left an hour ago after throwing up in the garden to crash at Puck’s.

“An hour ago?” Kurt repeats, frowning, and Mike nods, salutes him and departs.

He looks over Finn’s texts again, where his step-brother asks him for a ride home twenty minutes after leaving with Puck. Hungover Finn is going to get a serious verbal bitchslap from him tomorrow. Briefly, Kurt debates whether it’s too harsh to tell Carole about every time including this one that her son has snuck out for a night of heavy binge drinking that apparently all culminate in him throwing up over someone else’s nice things.

Then Sam appears in the kitchen doorway - _Sam_ , and this whole other mess of issues Kurt isn't ready to face - Sam, stumbling over his own feet and blinking down at Kurt like he doesn’t believe it’s really him. A grin breaks out over his face, this disarmingly charming thing. Kurt smiles back steadily and slips his phone back into his pocket, forgotten, without looking away from him.

“You came,” Sam says, beaming. His eyes are far too glassy, breath far too poisoned. He curls a hand around Kurt’s arm and says, quieter, “I wanted _you_ to come,” with startlingly bright eyes.

Kurt glances from where Sam’s clutching onto his arm to his other hand, where he’s clutching a plastic cup of – something that makes his nose wrinkle. “Oh,” is all he can reply, because Kurt never wanted to come here, never intended to, never thought he would. Sam invited him with all his good intentions and earnest smiles like he really believed Kurt could fit into this world and Kurt had pretended like he did, too, for Sam's sake only.

Right now there’s nothing he wants more than to go home.

He opens his mouth but before he can excuse himself Sam pulls him a step closer, so Kurt can see his messy blond bangs up close and the light shining on his parted pink lips. His mouth promptly clamps shut and swallows down any of his goodbyes.

“Could we,” Sam starts, then he pauses to lick his lips and glance at Kurt’s freckles, his smile falling, “Could we go talk somewhere? Just for a minute, I promise.”

It’s a bad idea. If Mercedes was here she’d tell him so, and Finn, and Rachel, and everyone he knows. Sam too, maybe, if he could really see it. But the way Sam looks at him sometimes is intoxicating and so _different_ Kurt can never find it in himself to say no to him, not for anything. It’s the way Sam’s looking at him here, right now.

“Sure,” he agrees, rolling his shoulders in a shrug. Then, more to reassure the people who aren’t here to see him make this mistake, he repeats, “Just for a minute.”

Sam lets out a gush of relieved breath through his grin and loosely takes hold of Kurt’s wrists, leading him out of the kitchen, up the flight of stairs. Brittany waves at him from behind the head of a stranger but Kurt can’t see her. Can’t see anything but the way Sam pauses on the first step to turn back and smile at him, like Kurt being here really _means_ something to him. Kurt’s not used to the way Sam can make him feel. He thinks he might never want to be, either.

Sam takes him to Stacey and Stevie’s bedroom door, the only one that’s been kept closed, and let’s them in, pulling his sister’s toybox against it afterwards to make sure it stays shut. He’s still smiling, crookedly, earnestly, gesturing for Kurt to sit on the bottom floral bedspread of his siblings’ bunk-bed. Kurt perches there, tentatively, and Sam takes a minute just to watch him with his big, beautiful smile before he sits next to him too.

Kurt takes a deep, quiet breath. Neither of them talk for a while.

Abruptly, Sam reaches over and fiddles with the folded cuff of Kurt’s shirt with a hand that looks like it might be shaking.

“You know, I had to hide like, all of my stuff in the attic for this thing,” he murmurs. His fingers brush the skin of Kurt’s wrist, just over his pulse, and pause there, and when Kurt quickly glances up at him he sees Sam’s smile has quirked into something stranger, self-deprecating. Sad. He swallows audibly and continues, “My room is almost empty and I don’t – want you to see it. Not like that.”

Kurt tries to picture it, anyway: the walls of Sam’s bedroom stripped of bad movie posters and his brother’s drawings; the tipsy stack of video-games at the side of his television gone; the action figures that he has hanging around all of his things like real little people going about their days all taken away. No comic books. No life-sized cardboard cut-out of Solid Snake by the window. It looks terribly bare, even in his head, like it could belong to anybody else, really, anybody at all.

Sam’s hand slides unsteadily into his, weaving their fingers and squeezing, effectively drawing Kurt back out of his thoughts. Sam looks at him and says, softly, “I’m so tired of hiding for these people, Kurt.” He shakes his head, looks at Kurt’s lips, and sighs out again, “So _tired_.”

“Then stop,” Kurt says, his brow furrowed. He doesn’t understand Sam a lot of the time. He doesn’t understand a lot of the people he knows, but those are smaller things, like Finn’s inexplicable shame when Kurt catches him watching _America’s Next Top Model_ by himself, or how Puck makes him swear on his dad’s life he won’t tell anybody when he accidentally lets slip about going to baking class with his grandmother. With Sam, it feels like _everything_. The way he filters his accent out of every word he says, the way he only wears his dorky superhero t-shirts if he doesn’t have to leave the house, the way he pretends to hate reading to hide the fact that he hates that he’s not _good_ at reading. 

The way he looks at Kurt when they’re alone. No wonder he likes being with Kurt so much and not having to feel like the biggest freak in the room sometimes. _God_.

“It’s not that easy for me,” Sam tells him, quietly. He holds onto Kurt’s hand with both of his and Kurt doesn’t know how many times he’d pictured this, how long he’s wanted this for, but right now the reality of it is making him sick. Sam is looking at him, drunk and lost and that’s _all_ , that’s it. 

He pulls his hand away from Sam’s and pushes his blond bangs back with it, tutting. “You need a glass of water,” he instructs. He even tries to smile. “And then maybe sobriety for the rest of the month.”

Sam blinks at him in confusion and reaches up to his forehead for Kurt’s hand again, but Kurt pulls it away and clasps it on his lap instead, looking away from Sam for a moment, at Stacey’s framed fingerpaintings on the opposite wall. He glances at Sam long enough to say, softly, “I’m going to head home.”

Sam frowns. “But you just got here.” He licks his lips again and says, “I’ll get you a drink and we can stay in here and just -”

“Just _what_?” Kurt doesn’t mean to snap, not when Sam doesn’t really know what he’s saying, doesn’t know at all how he’s making Kurt feel. He stands up before he can feel guilty for it, striding over to the door and nudging Stacey’s toybox out of the way with his foot. He’s breathing a little heavily, but he manages to calm himself down enough to look back at Sam, still sitting wide-eyed on the bottom bunk, without his eyes watering tellingly. “Enjoy your party, okay, Sam?”

Kurt bumps into Santana on his way out, who doesn’t seem nearly drunk enough for a party like this. Her face breaks into a wide smirk when she looks up at him. She digs into the pocket of her hot pants and pulls out a phone that she presses into Kurt’s hands, baring her sharp teeth in a grin. “Your brother’s,” she explains, then she walks away, waving at him without turning back, dismissively, like in her mind she’s done him a favour tonight.

He stuffs it into his pocket and pushes through the crowd, making sure he ignores Sam when he calls out to him and slams the door when he leaves.


End file.
